System Volume too low on Ubuntu 18.04

Question

I am on my way to completely shifting from Windows 10 to Ubuntu. So I dual booted the latest Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. After doing so I realized that my laptop's volume is too low. In Windows 10, the volume would be loud enough to fill an empty room, but in Ubuntu, I've to put my ears to the speaker to listen, even after having the volume to full maximum. Some articles suggested that I check out alsamixer, but that too wasn't of much help.

I then realized that I might have to install the drivers. Now here's the problem, on Windows, my audio driver shows as Realtek HD Audio whereas in Linux it shows Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio. I know for sure that my audio drivers are from Realtek because even HP's support website says so. I even have the Realtek HD Audio Manager in windows. I don't want to mess up my system trying to install any wrong driver.

Please help me, I've been struggling with this for days now:

rdias002@rdias002:~$ lspci -v | grep -A7 -i "audio"
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio (rev 21) (prog-if 80)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 32, IRQ 129
Memory at b1228000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Memory at b1200000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel, snd_soc_skl

I tried searching for solutions but couldn't really find one that fits my problem. I almost gave up, but then thought of asking for help here. Please excuse me if my question seems noobish, as this is my first time. I am a Windows power user so I'm familiar with computers and the command line, but quite a beginner to Linux.

So how can I get the Windows like volume in Ubuntu?

Thanks for your help in advance!

Laptop: HP 15 bs-544-tu

Answer 1

As a temporary solution, you can manually set it higher than 100% from the command line with:

pactl set-sink-volume 0 150%

If the command is not found, you need to install:

sudo apt install pulseaudio-utils

The 0 there is the index of the sound card sink you want to use. You can determine it with:

pacmd list-sinks | grep -e 'name:' -e 'index' 

The 150% is the percentage of volume you want. Start with 150% and work from there slowly. You dont want to blow your laptop speakers with clipped audio

Answer 2

Unverified, because I don't have the hardware anymore.

Most RealTek audio chips have a dedicated headphone amplifier that needs to be enabled if you want to connect headphones to it. By default, it is bypassed, as it introduces a bit of noise, and the amplifier is unnecessary if you connect another amplifier anyway.

In the ALSA sound system, there would be a switch in alsamixer for the amplifier, shown as a mixer channel with no slider, just a mute button, and pressing m to mute/unmute would activate and deactivate the amplifier.

In PulseAudio, I would expect this to show up in pavucontrol, either as a separate port (so it can be selected on the "Output Devices" tab), or as a device profile (which you would select on the "Configuration" tab).

Answer 3

You can change the option in:

Settings -> Sound -> Over-Amplification -> ON

if you want a higher volume beyond 100%

Answer 4

The problem is in that the master sound of alsamixer is set to low. To get loud and clear sound you need to type alsamixer in terminal. And using arrow keys set master sound to max value.

Answer 5

Selecting Settings then Sound and turning on Over Amplification solves the problem.

Answer 6

Using the built-in "Settings" GUI permanently solved the problem on my laptop. Using "Settings" -> "Sound" -> "Over-Amplification" to set that parameter to "ON" provides a fixed overamplification percentage of around 30%. This way has the advantage that the fix persists indefinitely, even after you close "Settings" and subsequently use the desktop's built-in audio playback volume slider.