[Pkg-alsa-devel] Muted audio devices on new installations / suggestions

[yuki]

Hallo Alsa/Alsamixer maintainers,

ever since using Linux, using a multiple audio devices tended to cause 
and causing pain on every new installation, so it did/does in Debian.

More precisely, with a combination of onboard sound chips (e. g. 
Conexant CX23885), HDMI sound (AMD radeon) and a dedicated Maudio card 
(VIA Technologies Inc. ICE1712 [Envy24] based) - especially this card 
(and probably other dedicated sound cards, too) is often muted on new 
installations, without any hint, why.

It will not output any sound, unless manually opening alsamixer in the 
terminal, switching to the device and turning up the volume there.

This kind of behavior for basic system functions is very unintuitive, 
especially for newbies and should be avoided at all cost - such little 
but important details tend to have a pretty bad impact on Linux' overall 
reputation.

Expectation would be, that all availible audio devices are installed at 
an initial base volume of 85-90%, so no avoidable black "Yikes, no sound 
here, Linux doesn't support my sound card!" experiences occur.

In addition, sound mixers and dedicated volume keys, e. g. in Gnome and 
Cinnamon, will obviously not allow for audio amplification greater than 
the setting in alsamixer, at least at some devices like the ICE1712, 
which will lead to frequent "I can't get a decent volume level!" 
experiences, which is bad either.

It should be possible to directly set the values of alsamixer devices by 
the corresponding active devices in the gui mixers and also to set 
volumes >100% (virtual or hardware amplification), to allow for a better 
audio experience in Linux.

Adding to that, to make Linux a more interesting target for sound 
production software, ultra-low-latency to-midi and to-usb signalling for 
synthesizers and other external (semi) professional audio hardware 
should be a top priority.

Thanks for your efforts!

Best regards,
yuki