[operagost]

I have a homebrew Athlon X4-based box running Live 13 which sends analog output through a Sherwood RD-5405 amp producing 50 watts per channel and two Yamaha outdoor speakers.

The output is very low. I had a Sony Blu-ray player attached to this amp at one time, and out of its volume scale from 0-90, I used to run it at about 45 to get what I'd guess is about 60-70 dB (I don't have an SPL meter, or I'd check). I have to run about 80 on that scale to get the same volume with XBMC, so I'm near maxed out. If I want the music really loud, I basically can't do it. And 50W RMS doesn't sound like much but trust me, it is. I should be able to get over 90 dB out of this amp, assuming the speakers could handle it. I generally use XBMC as a DLNA renderer, but I noticed that even if I use it locally there is no volume control. How can I get this thing to crank up the volume?

[fritsch]

amixer | pastebinit

in short: use alsamixer to change alsa volume - xbmc only changes internal volume
Edit: Don't forget xbmc's Debug Log as we don't know which dsound system you are running

[operagost]

I had a clue that would be where to go, but I can't get to the command prompt. When I exit, I log in again and it puts me right back into XBMC.

I am running off of a USB drive, and I have it set up to boot right into XMBC. I don't remember what sorcery I had to perform in order to get it to do that

[wsnipex]

CTRL+ALT+F1 or use ssh

[operagost]

Unfortunately, it doesn't accept "xbmc" with a blank password or my own user account with the password I set, so it looks like I'll have to wipe it out and start over. I kinda needed to do that to go to 13.1 anyway.

[operagost]

OK, amixer tells me that everything is at 100% except Master, which is at 55% (17 out of 31). I tried setting it to the max from both amixer and alsamixer, but it doesn't stay when I reboot. Indeed, I can't even tell if this is the fix because you can't get back into XBMC without rebooting. I haven't used Linux since the 1990s, and what little I know basically doesn't work anymore. Where's the conf file for this thing?

[operagost]

OK, it worked on the second try with alsamixer. I don't know why... but it worked. Thanks people.