2

I am new to Linux and Ubuntu and I just recently installed Ubuntu 19.10 to my Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 7. Most things seem to work fine but I am having issues with audio. Out of the box, the audio quality is great but I am unable to change the volume level: it is either 100% or 0%. I found a solution to change the volume by doing the following:

Add the lines to /etc/pulse/daemon.conf:

enable-lfe-remixing = yes
lfe-crossover-freq = 250

and then set Audio Profile to Analog Surround 2.1 Output + Analog Stereo Input in PulseAudio Volume Control.

Doing the above two things make the volume changeable but severely degrades audio quality, making the audio sound like its coming out of tin can.

I have tried playing around with the PCM and Speaker levels in alsamixer but that did nothing.

I am looking for a solution which maintains the audio quality when the volume was locked at 100% but allows me to change the audio in discrete steps using the volume buttons. Since I am new to linux, I do not know what information I need to provide. Please let me know if you require any more information from me to assist me better. Thank you very much.

Some Information:

  1. alsamixer says my audio card is HDA Intel PCH and chip is Realtek ALC285.
Archit Kithania
  • 203
  • 2
  • 9

1 Answers1

2

Since I have found a solution, I would like to share it in hopes that it helps someone else. I have noticed that for my machine, the volume buttons were actually changing the Master volume in alsamixer. I don’t know why this wasn’t working before, but now when I change the PCM while keeping master maxed out in alsamixer, the volume level changes and the audio quality remains intact. All that was left was to make it so that the volume buttons change the PCM rather than the master volume. I did this by following this post. Although this post is for 16.04, it worked well for 19.10 as well. I will be following future updates for a better solution to this issue.

Archit Kithania
  • 203
  • 2
  • 9