Very low sound with Realtek* ALC888 codec

[vicokoby]

I have an old computer that has a built-in HDA sound card with the Realtek* ALC888 codec but for some reason, the sound volume is very low with VSBHDA, you can only hear it by putting your ear directly to the speaker.

My motherboard specs: https://www.pcel.com/Intel-BOXDG31PR-T-Madre-Intel-DG31PR-ChipSet-Intel-G31-Express-Soporta-Celeron400-DualCore-Core2Duo-Core2Quad-Integrado-Audio-5-1-Red-Video-Intel-3100-Memoria-DDR2-800-66-57867

[Baron-von-Riedesel]

run the hdastat utility - before and after vsbhda is loaded.

[vicokoby]

run the hdastat utility - before and after vsbhda is loaded.
I got this:

[Baron-von-Riedesel]

You did run the jhdstat tool, which displays the status of jdpmi.dll - that's not relevant here.
With HDASTAT I mean the little tool hdastat.exe, included in hdautils, that displays the status of the HDA controller and its attached codec - this allows to see the volumes of the (various) amplifiers. The log is quite large, so better redirect it to a file.

[vicokoby]

You did run the jhdstat tool, which displays the status of jdpmi.dll - that's not relevant here. With HDASTAT I mean the little tool hdastat.exe, included in hdautils, that displays the status of the HDA controller and its attached codec - this allows to see the volumes of the (various) amplifiers. The log is quite large, so better redirect it to a file.

Please check
BEFORE.TXT
AFTER.TXT

[Baron-von-Riedesel]

Ok. The status is indeed a bit strange:

 audio output ( type 0 )

 2/  2/0F00/9  - widget cap.: 0x11 ([1]=inp amp, [2]=out amp, digital=0, chnl cnt-1=1)
 2/  2/0F00/10 - supported PCM rates: 0xe0560
 2/  2/0F03/0  - processing state: 0x0
 2/  2/0F06/0  - link stream/channel: 0x10 (stream=1, channel=0)
 2/  2/000A/0  - converter format: 0x4011 (rate=44100, bits=16, channels=2)
 2/  2/0F2D/0  - converter channel count: 0x0

 audio mixer ( type 2 )

 2/ 12/0F00/9  - widget cap.: 0x20010f ([1]=inp amp, [2]=out amp, digital=0, chnl cnt-1=1)
 2/ 12/0F00/13 - input amplifier details: 0x80000000
 2/ 12/000B/0  - amplifier gain/mute: 0x0 ([7] mute, [6:0] gain)
 2/ 12/0F00/18 - output amplifier details: 0x51f1f
 2/ 12/000B/8000  - amplifier gain/mute: 0x0 ([7] mute, [6:0] gain)
 2/ 12/0F00/14 - connection list length: 2
 2/ 12/0F02/00 - get entries in connection list: 2 11 0 0

If I interpret this correctly, the used DAC ("audio output") has no amplifier - instead, the mixer widget has one, but is currently on the lowest level (of 32).
VSBHDA assumes that the volume is to set at the DAC, so actually it doesn't know how to set the volume.

Did you try MPXPLAY? IIRC, vsbhda doesn't reset the HDA controller, so if MPXPLAY sets the volume correctly, the setting will be taken by VSBHDA. If MPXPLAY's volume is also very low, one has to modify the vsbhda source.

EDIT: Just looked at the source of hdaplay.asm ( the other tool in hdautils ). Looks like this tool tries to set the volumes of both DAC and mixer. So try hdaplay with a .wav file - volume should be high.

[vicokoby]

@Baron-von-Riedesel
MPXPlay works fine, the sound volume is correct.
However, after running MPXPlay I cannot run vsbhda without restarting the PC, as I get an error message:

HDA: card 0 skipped - no codecs attached
No soundcard found!

Edit: I tried to reproduce several WAV files with HDAPlay, but I only get an error: "no data chunk found"