Re: Muting only affects audio that is playing

On Wed, 7 Jan 2026, Christos Margiolis wrote:

> On Sat Jan 3, 2026 at 9:44 PM CET, Sean C. Farley wrote:
>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2026, Christos Margiolis wrote:
>>> That's odd indeed. What is the output of mixer(8) once the sound is
>>> unmuted? Does this happen with other audio devices (if you have any), or
>>> only with this one?
>>
>> If the mixer is in the muted state, then it remains that way even after
>> the sound is being output:
>>      vol       = 0.50:0.50     pbk mute
>>
>> Apparently, the issue is only with this card.  I just enabled the
>> onboard audio device (ALC4080), and it does not exhibit the same
>> problem.  This is probably why I wondered if this problem was new as I
>> had switched a few months ago to the sound card.  I thought I had just
>> not run into it before now.
>
> But what this *not* a problem with the card in question at some point in
> the past? Or did it appear after some update?

The card is new.  I had only noticed the issue recently after I had 
muted the card (mixer vol.mute=toggle) yet got an audio notification 
from Firefox afterwards.  It may never have worked with this card.

Is the muting performed at the hardware level or within the driver?  I 
am guessing inside the driver since neither of these have a hwvol_mixer 
sysctl.

To reduce the interaction, I took the usr.bin/beep program and removed 
the ioctl() calls.  It still makes a sound through the speakers, so the 
act of opening and/or writing to the dsp device ignores the mute status, 
for me.  Unfortunately, I have no other HDA devices to test.

BTW, I noticed that pcm/dsp.c calls the CHN_GETMUTE() macro.  However, 
there is also a chn_getmute_matrix() function that is unused.

>> uaudio0: <Generic USB Audio, class 239/2, rev 2.00/0.03, addr 1> on usbus0
>> ugen0.2: <USB Audio ASUSTek Computer, Inc.> at usbus0, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON (100mA)
>>
>> It is probably unrelated, but I did hear a hum just now from my speakers
>> although nothing was playing.  Reseating the audio cables fixed it.
>> They are pretty old Altec Lansing speakers but still sound very nice.
>>
>> One more oddity but extremely rare.  I have heard music from my speakers
>> when the power for the speakers was off.  That was when I was using the
>> onboard sound.
>
> This sound more like a hardware issue, but I'm not entirely sure without
> more information, unfortunately.

No problem.  I never run into problems that are easy to find and/or fix. 
LOL  It could just be the age of the speakers.

Sean
-- 
scf@FreeBSD.org