Albert Santoni

LinkedIn | Github

About | Portfolio | Oscillicious | Mixxx | Links

Linux Tweaks

Here's some tweak(s) that I've hacked together, I hope someone finds them useful.

M-Audio (Revolution 7.1) Volume Fix

The M-Audio Revolution 7.1 soundcard works pretty well in Linux. I have two major beefs with it though
A) Quake 3-based games don't like it and B) The volume for the left and right channels on the soundcard are controlled by separate unlinkedcontrols in both ALSA and OSS (by default.) This is an important flaw because many applications like the GNOME volume control applet are meant to modify one volume control at a time.

Update #1: If you use icculus.org Quake3, you can play Quake3 with sound. (although, no PunkBuster...)
Update #2: Johannes Hoerhan sent me an even better solution to Problem B - Use the "softvol" plug that ALSA features.
You can take a look at my new asound.conf here: asound.conf [1,415 bytes]
I now have a "PCM" volume control that allows me to control the volume on both at once.

My old fix was this script: maudiofix.sh [549 bytes]
(This still might be useful in some cases though)

The script just runs forever in a loop, and contiuously monitors the volume of the left channel, and sets the volume of the right channel to match it.
For best usage, run this script at login. In GNOME 2.8+, add it to the "Startup Programs" tab located in the "Sessions" options (System->Sessions).

This simple script requires amixer, part of the alsa-utils package (any modern Linux distro has a package for this.)

Under Perpetual (Re)Construction
Copyright © 2026 Albert Santoni