Sound quieter in Linux than Windows, 2560x1440 27" Korean Display not working. The problems I encountered and their solution.

TLDR: Upgraded computer. No video with 27” 2560x1440 display. Solution: Insert line into xorg.conf which links to an EDID file which instantly fixes the display problem. Sound was too quiet with sound-card. Alsa mixer was set to 50% by default despite the use of Pulseaudio. Solution: Run “alsamixer” and up the volume on the required output lines.

There are a couple things that I have been doing of late which I have had to do a fair bit of research on the Internet to find the answers to my problems, and so I'd like to make a post describing my problems and the solutions I encountered in the hope that other people will find my post and not have to search as hard for the answers that I struggled so long to find.

Over the past couple months I have made some pretty extensive changes to my computer which I will detail here:

I purchased a new Yamakasi Catleap Q270 monitor with its beautiful 2560x1440 resolution I am absolutely loving it. It doesn't actually have any dead or stuck pixels that I could find and works 100% perfectly.

I bought a new EVGA GTX 680 GPU for my computer to replace my older 5970. Only a slight upgrade in speed but it leaves me with an excellent amount of upgradeability.

Finally, I purchased a new $1200 sound system which I have detailed in other threads. This thread though will only be about the software side of the equation.

I had been using windows for most of the summer for gaming and I was waiting for all my hardware upgrades before I would reinstall my linux. I wanted a fresh install for all the new hardware changes (I also did a fresh install of windows 7).

I installed Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon, and it appeared to work from the start. The graphics were in a low resolution but working mode. I then proceeded to begin to pull my hair out because I could not get my graphics drivers to work, I probably reinstalled 10 times. It was almost impossible to identify the problem. I would install my graphics drivers and then suddenly I would have no video. I assumed the problem was with my graphics drivers.

It wasn't.

I finally stumbled upon this post in the Yamakasi Catleap monitor club which linked to a blog post about this very issue. The problem in fact lied with my Yamakasi Catleap. Because it is such a new monitor, (which actually doesn't work with all GPU's) its EDID is not in linux by default. EDID stands for Extended Display Information Data. Basically it tells linux what the capabilities of the monitor are and what kind of signal to output to the monitor. The solution is simple, all I had to do was

Under the device section in your xorg.conf file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf) add this line:
and copy this file into /etc/X11/ original credit for this goes to Shimian. This is in fact just a file with all the information, you can take this and put it directly into your xorg.conf and I believe that would work also, but it's easier just to call up the file in my opinion (I haven't tested putting it directly into your xorg.conf so don't quote me there):

http://learnitwithme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/edid-shimian.bin


My xorg.conf looks like this:

If for some reason the mirror for the bin goes down, here is the results of the command "parse-edid /etc/X11/edid-shimian.bin":

Simple. Instantly my 27” display worked perfectly. Basically, if you are having problems getting your 27” Korean display such as the Yamakasi Catleap to work with linux, this will probably fix all your problems. The problem isn't related to the drivers not working after being installed on linux (mint ubuntu arch all will suffer this same problem) but in fact is related to it just not knowing how to communicate with the monitor.

The most difficult thing with finding this solution in fact was finding the problem, because originally on all accounts my video would stop working after installing the proprietary Nvidia drivers, which led me to think they were the problem when they weren't. I am in love with this display and it looks incredible.

Here is a quick link which will tell you how to figure out if the EDID is the problem for your monitor: http://maxolasersquad.blogspot.com/2009/04/get-edid-information.html

If you're output gets an error after running those two commands, you know your EDID is a problem, otherwise you should get an output similar to the parse-edid above.

Tags: driver, broken, linux, mint, ubuntu, yamakasi, catleap, q270, 27 inch, 2560x1440, nvidia, ati

(these are in a hope that people with this same problem will find this post with a solution.

Next up, my sound-card. The HT|Omega Claro Halo works perfectly out of the box on linux, but that doesn't mean that linux by default is using the full potential of the sound-card. Finally having a sound-card / setup that could truly play my music, I wanted to be sure that I was using the full potential of my sound-card.

The main problem I was experiencing was my sound was for some reason quieter in linux than windows and I couldn't figure out why. Solving that was fairly simple. It turns out that pulseaudio doesn't have complete control of the volume, but instead although it does do decoding of the audio, it is directly affected by Alsa too. I had not noticed this and so didn't realize to check my alsa settings. It turns out that my alsa volume was set to 50% by default meaning that even with my pulseaudio volume set to full, I was only using have the volume potential of my sound-card. To change the volume of alsa simply run “alsamixer” in the terminal, push “f6” to select your soundcard, and adjust all the volumes to full (0.0db boost). Note: Be very careful putting it to max, for alsamixer you only want to go up to 0.0dB boost because after that it can cause your audio to become distorted. Sometimes 100% is beyond 0.0dB If for some reason a channel is muted simply press “m” to unmute it. Now I simply use my Pulseaudio to control the volume of my music and I can push my amp far beyond what it is capable of producing volume wise.

This wasn't the only setting I changed though, I also wanted to make sure I was playing a rate of 96KHZ and my bitrate set to either 24 or 32. The way to change these settings is to edit your “/etc/pulse/daemon.conf” file. After messing around with the settings in that file I decided upon these settings as being the optimum. Some of the settings increased the CPU usage too much and others actually introduced pops into the music when I would start playback, so this is what I found to be the best settings. There wasn't any noticeable change in audio quality but there is a change in volume from 16 bit to 24 or 32 bit, but as I said before the biggest fix to my volume issues was to set my alsa volume higher. After you edit the “daemon.conf” file simply run “pulseaudio -k” to restart the daemon and test your settings. If you don't like it go back and fiddle around with them. Here is a man file with most of the settings and the options they have: http://linux.die.net/man/5/pulse-daemon.conf

Here are the settings I decided upon as important (/etc/pulse/daemon.conf):
If you're having problems with quieter audio in linux over windows, my advice would be to make sure alsamixer is set to 0.0db boost. (100%)

Tags: quiet, audio, HT| Omega Claro Halo, linux, ubuntu, mint, alsa, pulseaudio, volume, sound-quality, sound-card, soundcard, sound in linux

Anyway, those are some of the issues I had and the solutions I found. If anyone is having problems with similar issues feel free to post here and I will do my best to help you out. I tried to just post the meat of each solution, but there are many smaller tricks I may be using which aren't well known for getting things working which I'd be glad to attempt and share. Thought I'd put these solutions up for someone else to use. My issues are pretty obscure, but maybe someone will have the same ones I did. With regards to the sound-card it wasn't necessary to edit the pulseaudio daemon, but I wanted to be sure that I was using the full potential of my sound-card. Most music is only recorded at 24bit 44100Hz but I wanted to be outputting 24bit 96kHz when possible.

I moved this from a thread to here