Weird things happening. I can move the slider for volume up and down but there is no change. Also when I go to a terminal and use alsamixer things are not showing up like they should. I can still use the volume control on the webpage, but that is it. No overall system control of the volume. This just started a day or two ago. Have not tried on the other computer yet. Will do that as well…
OK. No issue on the newer computer. I am not sure if it was a recent update that broke things. I see that in the update queue for the newer computer there are updates for wireplumber. I was wondering if I should do those updates or skip them at this point. If I do them and it breaks then I would know, but I would also have a broken volume control system…
Last update before I head to work… Weird thing is that when I log in I see the volume is at zero. That should not happen. BTW I am still using volumeicon and it works fine on both computers. I did skip the wireplumber update on the new computer for now. So it is still sitting there ready to be run. I need to get to work so I can look into this later. One computer working just fine while the other is not. Kind of strange. They both get updated at about the same time.
OK. I was able to at least adjust volume using the master in alsamixer. No other troubleshooting at the moment. Just wondering if I do the wireplumber update on the newer computer and it kills things, can I roll it back? I will be back home in a few hours so I can take a look here at that time.
Looks like I figured it out but I am not sure what happened exactly. I ended up going into preferences for volumeicon and changing it from “default” to my actual sound chip. And now it is working again. I also applied the wireplumber updates on the new computer. Going to see if it still works after a reboot. The only thing I can think happened is that I was in alsamixer the other day and maybe I chose the wrong thing. But it is now working and hopefully it will remain working. Will report back if there is any change. On the newer computer it is still set as default in preferences.
I’m getting weird volume issues after the latest update. The volume slider randomly pops up on screen. The keyboard buttons to adjust volume dont seem to work. I’m using COSMIC Atomic 43.20260404.0.
You might want to start a new topic on that. If you go into the terminal and type in alsamixer, you can always access volume that way. But I don’t know how everything connects behind the scenes. I think that maybe I had selected the wrong sound chip the other day when I was playing around in alsamixer.
Another update. Although I have found a way to make the volume control work properly, it does seem that there are still a few issues. For one, on the newer computer I did not have to change from “default” in volumeicon. Second, when I go into alsamixer it does not seem to be tracking the same thing as what is showing on my desktop. When you look at master it says zero. Yet there is sound, so it can not be at zero. I am going to try a reboot now to see if that remains the same. It is kind of bizarre for sure.
Maybe I spoke too soon. Now it seems that the issue is occuring on both computers. And it seems that now the volume was set correctly at boot up. This is bizarre for sure. I was trying to remember if the issue occurred on the newer computer before or after I brought up alsamixer. If it occurred after then there is something that alsamixer is doing that is affecting things. Anyway here is what the main screen looks like in the terminal after bringing up alsamixer…
The plot thickens… Yes, when I reboot on this computer it always comes back with the volume level set to 55. On the other computer it does not do that. Also on both computers I now have to have the volumeicon preferences set to the actual sound chip instead of “default”. If I set it to default it comes back as being muted and no longer works even when the slider goes up or down. So something is off there. Just bizarre. It works, but just not right…
Also when I go into alsamixer should it be showing the actual card or chip or does it always just say “PipeWire”? I don’t remember. Had not been in alsamixer for a while. For me it is just a backup volume control of sorts…
Maybe I spoke to soon. Now it seems that the issue is occuring on both computers.
That’s normal and that’s what the default view in alsamixer usually looks like, that is you’re looking at the “Pipewire” mixer. That’s not really what you want to look at. Press “F6” function key and find the actual sound hardware. It will probably show one for HDMI and one named something like “HDA-Generic” or “HD-Audio Generic”. Pick the 2nd one, HD related one. Alsamixer has this annoying habit of going to the “Pipewire” virtual card for some reason. I personally set a shell alias in my bashrc so that “alsamixer” is really this:
alias alsamixer='alsamixer --no-color --card=1 --view=all'
that is, I don’t have to fool around with pressing F6 and manually selecting the HD card and selecting the All view with F5, it just goes there right away since “–card=1” in my system is the HDA card.
Another option is to dnf install a fancier gui alsa tool like “qasmixer”, that tool can be set in Settings to go to the view you want. So I have it go to Mixer Device of “hw” and “Card” of “HD-Audio Generic”. It looks like this:
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Yeah. I can see the proper volume when I hit F6. Weird thing is that when I then go to the master slider it will start by increasing the volume by 1 at a time and then at a certain point it starts to skip by 2 (even numbers). I did at least get the computer to start at 36 now instead of 55 by using the command sudo alsactl store. On the other computer it justs boots up at the last volume it was before shutdown. WIth volumeicon I can set the volume to 35 and that does reflect in alsamixer so maybe I should just do that and then rerun the store command…
No, I forgot that does not work. Volumeicon shows 35 and alsamixer shows 36. Bizarre.
This is probably my final update about this issue. Let me say that one of the biggest issues right now is a decent colume control. That is why I use volumeicon. Just click on the icon and you get instant feedback on the current volume level and the slider pops up. The volume control that is included does not work as well. It will not show the current volume level until you start adjusting and only increments in steps of 5. The only issue with volumeicon is that it is no longer supported, which is a shame.
My son and I spent about 45 minutes or so yesterday looking into this issue. We checked and compared the files on both computers. We made sure that the default was set correctly. But in the end we came up empty. Right now we have a workaround but not an actual solution or the reason why this happened in the first place. The default is set correctly as the onboard sound chip. However, if you choose “default” in volumeicon then it does not work. So something seems to be broken on the back end of volumeicon for some reason. And this happened after an update to wireplumber. So my suspicion is that is what caused the issue. But I have no proof. I guess that the only way would be to roll back wireplumber and see if the issued resolved. But I don’t think I will be doing that.
Can Fedora come up with a better and more usable volume control than the one that is installed? Model it after volumeicon? And why was support for volumeicon dropped in the first place? It is far superior to the one that comes with the distro.
Here is another good one. Don’t know if it is just the documentation for speaker-test that is wrong. Was just trying to run that and check to make sure that everything was working properly in stereo. But when I run speaker-test it only comes up with a test in mono, no matter what parameters I was using. When I went to YouTube and ran a speaker test, everything is working as it should be.
speaker-test -c 2
would do a test with left and right channels, without the “-c #” it defaults to mono.
Does it work if you put on the -c option?
I usually use:
speaker-test -c 2 -t wav -l 2
the -l 2 has it end at two loops so it doesn’t run forever
and only increments in steps of 5.
I guess you’re in Gnome desktop? In KDE you can configure the volume control to step in any integer units you like. For example:
System Settings → Sound → “Volume change step” (make this whatever integer you want)
OK. That worked. I guess I read the man page wrong.
Actually it is the MATE spin. Anyway volumeicon seems to work quite well and I like it.