GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 643723
Please make Gnome as good as Windows for playing videos
Last modified: 2011-08-09 14:37:49 UTC
This is a very annoying problem. I have labeled this as an enhancement but IMHO it really is a bug. It is the most aggravating Gnome problem for me. The problem is the 99% of the time I can't hear videos. The Gnome volume control is all the way up and my speakers are all the way up. Videos that play nicely on Windows are barely audible on Gnome. Pretty please fix this problem. I searched bugs and I found one, Bug 325224: "Normalize audio volume" (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=325224) that is marked "Unconfirmed", but believe me, I can confirm that this is a problem for me. Maybe I don't have the right plugin or codec, whatever that is. FWIW, I installed every GStreamer plugin I could find and I looked on the web, but the problem lingers on. Am I the only one with this problem? Thanks guys. Gnome rocks. I just can't hear it!
have you tried boosting the volume with pavucontrol? You can lauch it from a terminal or choose the "sound preferences" item in the menu popping up left-clicking the volume applet on the desktop. In the window appearing, you'll see it's possible to boost the volume over 100%, but be careful: in case you're using some defective hardware it might be damaged after prolonged usage at high volumes (and the same for your eardrums if you're using headsets).
AHEM! I somehow managed to miss that item on the Sound Preferences control panel. Regardless, I still have to turn it up to 130% just to hear most utube videos. And once I turn it down I have to re-open the control panel to turn it back up. Meanwhile, my 2.1 speaker system volume is all the way up, and that is not right. I don't have to do that with Windows; I shouldn't have to turn it up above 50%. Can't the codec or the driver or whatever dynamically boost the gain? Why is Windows better?
I don't think this is a gstreamer issue, but for the sake of it you could make a screenshot of your volume mixer window. Or open a terminal, run alsamixer, press Alr+PrintScreen and attach the image here. Windows is not any better here than Gnome, you just happend to have a broken audio setup :/
Please reopen if you actually care to discuss this with us.
Created attachment 193487 [details] Screen shot of my ALSA Mixer panel per request I'm not sure what this is supposed to show...
If my audio setup is broken why does it work at all? What can I do to analyze and/or fix it?
I could read from the mixer what card you have. There is nothing wrong with the mixer levels), but there seems to be issues with the sound-chip and the alsa support for it: https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+question/99798 http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1021701.html just search in google for "sigmatel CXD9872rd/k volume issue"