[Pkg-alsa-devel] Bug#909773: alsa-utils: alsamixer Master configured improperly for line-in of Realtek ALC887-VD

[Alan W. Irwin]

Package: alsa-utils
Version: 1.1.6-1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

To give some background I have a TV card whose line-out is connected
to sound card line-in.  As far as I can tell for Debian Testing =
Buster line-in for this sound chip (and possibly all others although I
can find no documentation of this) only gets connected to *sound card*
line-out and therefore to my computer speakers if alsamixer the
Loopback item for this sound chip is enabled.  (This is the only way I
have been able to hear the audio channel of the TV card.) In my prior
experience with Debian Oldstable = Jessie, I don't recall
there was an alsamixer Loopback item to be enabled, but the net effect
for that version of Debian was sound card line-in
was automatically connected to sound card line-out.  And in that
Oldstable case the volume of TV audio results could be controlled from
both Line and Master.

The issue for the present Debian Buster case is the volume of the TV
results can only be controlled by Line which means generic volume
controls (e.g., from the pulseaudio "sound card" that alsamixer sees)
whose Master item interacts with the Master item of the Realtek
ALC887-VD sound card have no effect on the volume of the TV results.
Which in turn means that tvtime, for example, cannot control the
volume of the TV any more.  I don't have a clear picture about how the
Master item controls the overall volume associated with most alsamixer
items for the Realtek ALC887-VD, but the fix for the current bug
should be that Master control is also extended to the alsamixer Line
item for that sound card.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.18.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/16 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_CA.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_CA.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_CA:en (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages alsa-utils depends on:
ii  kmod              25-1
ii  libasound2        1.1.6-1
ii  libc6             2.27-6
ii  libfftw3-single3  3.3.8-2
ii  libncursesw6      6.1+20180714-1
ii  libsamplerate0    0.1.9-2
ii  libtinfo6         6.1+20180714-1
ii  lsb-base          9.20170808
ii  whiptail          0.52.20-7

alsa-utils recommends no packages.

alsa-utils suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information