[Q] speaker is very quiet -- did I kill it?

[lexelby]

I noticed the other day that even with all volume sliders at 100%, my tf701t is significantly quieter than it used to be. I've restored a nandroid, wiped data, even accidentally wiped EVERTHING including all of my files (turns out that the bootloader's wipe option kills your internal SD card contents, too... argh!). Nothing at all seems to increase the sound volume.

I have this feeling I might have caused this with a bit of (perhaps unwise) tinkering. I have ubuntu running in a chroot, and I was poking around and seeing if I could get sound working from the ubuntu side. I saw that with root (or with my user added to the right group) I can run alsamixer and get at all sorts of interesting little sliders. I experimented a fair bit, seeing if raising various sliders and unmuting various channels would let me get sound to play using alsa's aplay command. None of that panned out and I abandoned my effort.

Fast forward to yesterday, days and several reboots after I did the above tinkering, and I noticed that the speaker output was barely audible. I've poked around in alsamixer, and I can get it a BIT louder by unmuting a couple of the channels, but it's nowhere near actually useful volume. I'm not at all sure I caused this by tinkering with alsamixer, but I'm also not at all sure I didn't. I wouldn't have expected any changes I made to survive a reboot, but maybe the tegra chip does things weirdly.

Anyone have any ideas?

If anyone's feeling especially helpful, it would be incredibly useful to me if you could get me the normal alsa mixer channel values. Here's how you can do it with the least amount of fuss (root required of course):

1. grab "Complete Linux Installer" from the market -- I swear this isn't a plug
2. Follow the tutorial to grab the "core" version of ubuntu 13.10.
3. get it all set up and boot it up
4. when it asks, don't run vnc or sshd
5. open a second terminal, and run these commands:
6. su
7. umount /data/local/mnt/dev/pts
8. mount -t bind /dev /data/local/mnt/dev
9. mount -t devpts devpts /data/local/mnt/dev/pts
10. Now, back in the first terminal, do this:
11. apt-get install alsa-utils
12. amixer contents > useful_data_for_lexelby.txt
13. Grab that file and post it here

I realize that's a lot of effort to ask of you folks -- just hoping someone will have pity on a poor amateur android tinkerer Some linux knowledge would probably be useful, as I've glossed over a few of the setup details. Thanks in advance to any brave souls willing to give this a try.

 

[YayYouFixedIt]

I noticed the other day that even with all volume sliders at 100%, my tf701t is significantly quieter than it used to be. I've restored a nandroid, wiped data, even accidentally wiped EVERTHING including all of my files (turns out that the bootloader's wipe option kills your internal SD card contents, too... argh!). Nothing at all seems to increase the sound volume.

I have this feeling I might have caused this with a bit of (perhaps unwise) tinkering. I have ubuntu running in a chroot, and I was poking around and seeing if I could get sound working from the ubuntu side. I saw that with root (or with my user added to the right group) I can run alsamixer and get at all sorts of interesting little sliders. I experimented a fair bit, seeing if raising various sliders and unmuting various channels would let me get sound to play using alsa's aplay command. None of that panned out and I abandoned my effort.

Fast forward to yesterday, days and several reboots after I did the above tinkering, and I noticed that the speaker output was barely audible. I've poked around in alsamixer, and I can get it a BIT louder by unmuting a couple of the channels, but it's nowhere near actually useful volume. I'm not at all sure I caused this by tinkering with alsamixer, but I'm also not at all sure I didn't. I wouldn't have expected any changes I made to survive a reboot, but maybe the tegra chip does things weirdly.

Anyone have any ideas?

If anyone's feeling especially helpful, it would be incredibly useful to me if you could get me the normal alsa mixer channel values. Here's how you can do it with the least amount of fuss (root required of course):

1. grab "Complete Linux Installer" from the market -- I swear this isn't a plug
2. Follow the tutorial to grab the "core" version of ubuntu 13.10.
3. get it all set up and boot it up
4. when it asks, don't run vnc or sshd
5. open a second terminal, and run these commands:
6. su
7. umount /data/local/mnt/dev/pts
8. mount -t bind /dev /data/local/mnt/dev
9. mount -t devpts devpts /data/local/mnt/dev/pts
10. Now, back in the first terminal, do this:
11. apt-get install alsa-utils
12. amixer contents > useful_data_for_lexelby.txt
13. Grab that file and post it here

I realize that's a lot of effort to ask of you folks -- just hoping someone will have pity on a poor amateur android tinkerer Some linux knowledge would probably be useful, as I've glossed over a few of the setup details. Thanks in advance to any brave souls willing to give this a try.

I dont know if this is helpful without mounting things. Ill do the mounts later. I used Linux deploy as well.
numid=1,iface=CARD,name='HDMI/DP,pcm=3 Jack'
; type=BOOLEAN,access=r-------,values=1
: values=off
numid=2,iface=MIXER,name='IEC958 Playback Con Mask'
; type=IEC958,access=r-------,values=1
: values=[AES0=0x0f AES1=0xff AES2=0x00 AES3=0x00]
numid=3,iface=MIXER,name='IEC958 Playback Pro Mask'
; type=IEC958,access=r-------,values=1
: values=[AES0=0x0f AES1=0x00 AES2=0x00 AES3=0x00]
numid=4,iface=MIXER,name='IEC958 Playback Default'
; type=IEC958,access=rw------,values=1
: values=[AES0=0x00 AES1=0x00 AES2=0x00 AES3=0x00]
numid=5,iface=MIXER,name='IEC958 Playback Switch'
; type=BOOLEAN,access=rw------,values=1
: values=on
numid=6,iface=MIXER,name='HDA Decode Capability'
; type=INTEGER,access=rw------,values=1,min=0,max=-1,step=0
: values=0
numid=7,iface=MIXER,name='HDA Maximum PCM Channels'
; type=INTEGER,access=rw------,values=1,min=0,max=-1,step=0
: values=0
numid=8,iface=PCM,name='ELD',device=3
; type=BYTES,access=r-------,values=0

---------- Post added at 08:32 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:18 AM ----------

Doesnt linux deploy mount all these things anyway? Running the mixer from linux deploy doesnt let me changed volume levels as far as I know. It does show the sound devices. Might it be that some things are read only. Try installing it possibly with Archlinux which im using. Maybe itll fix it for you in some magical way

 

[lexelby]

Oh! That's almost exactly what I need. They only thing is that I forgot to mention that I need the mixer values for card 1 -- it defaults to sound card 0, which is the hdmi output. It looks like your Linux installer did the bind mount of /dev just fine. Not sure why Compete Linux Installer doesn't, but it should. I ended up hacking the startup script to mount /dev properly.

Thanks so much for your help!

 

[YayYouFixedIt]

Oh! That's almost exactly what I need. They only thing is that I forgot to mention that I need the mixer values for card 1 -- it defaults to sound card 0, which is the hdmi output. It looks like your Linux installer did the bind mount of /dev just fine. Not sure why Compete Linux Installer doesn't, but it should. I ended up hacking the startup script to mount /dev properly.

Thanks so much for your help!

Oh right. Lots more information here.

 

[YayYouFixedIt]

And with linuxdeploy you can VNC into as if it were some kind of RASPBERRY PI OR BEAGLEBOARD advertised to you for all of eternity!!

 

[lexelby]

Thanks so much for providing that amixer output!

And with linuxdeploy you can VNC into as if it were some kind of RASPBERRY PI OR BEAGLEBOARD advertised to you for all of eternity!!

Yeah, the one I used does vnc, but performance is pretty pitiful. I use XSDL from the market, a direct x11 server. Supports more apps (chrome crashes on vnc for me) and it's much faster -- almost like a real Linux box.

 

[YayYouFixedIt]

Thanks so much for providing that amixer output!



Yeah, the one I used does vnc, but performance is pretty pitiful. I use XSDL from the market, a direct x11 server. Supports more apps (chrome crashes on vnc for me) and it's much faster -- almost like a real Linux box.

Very cool, I see with XSDL you can stream a Linux app directly to the tablet Like intelliJ/android studio for example looks exactly the same. Only thing is I couldnt see the on screen keyboard it mentions in the settings.
EDIT: Oh it looks like you have to use the default keyboard.

 

[aderoose]

How did you fix it?

So, did you ever solve the problem with the internal speaker volume? I'm having a similar issue after rooting and installing a custom ROM. I ended up going back to Jellybean to solve a battery drain issue I was having.

 

[lexelby]

Actually, no, I never did find a fix. I tried various other ROMs, but none fixed it. I think my initial theories that I broke it by tinkering with alsamixer were unfounded, and this is just some weird hardware flaw. I bought a little battery-powered speaker which helps a bit.

 

[babusek]

I have same problem

Hi, I have same problem with quiet speaker. Today I did my first root of android device by these instructions. Root was successful and then during using my tablet I realized the speaker is very quiet. After root I did only one thing - removed file /system/vendor/lib/mediadrm/libwvdrmengine.so which was the part of solution of battery drain problem described here. Sound via external speakers connected by jack into tablet is ok.

I tried fastboot recovery, wipe data and cold start, but still same problem. Even loading removed file back wasn't helpful.

If you anybody has resolved same problem, thank you for advice, how to repair it. I hope this problem has a solution.

 

[YayYouFixedIt]

Hi, I have same problem with quiet speaker. Today I did my first root of android device by these instructions. Root was successful and then during using my tablet I realized the speaker is very quiet. After root I did only one thing - removed file /system/vendor/lib/mediadrm/libwvdrmengine.so which was the part of solution of battery drain problem described here. Sound via external speakers connected by jack into tablet is ok.

I tried fastboot recovery, wipe data and cold start, but still same problem. Even loading removed file back wasn't helpful.

If you anybody has resolved same problem, thank you for advice, how to repair it. I hope this problem has a solution.

You install the touch recovery?