Boost Native Joggler Volume

[earthski63]

Thank you MrMonkington - the volume on my Joggler in the kitchen is now loud enough for my wife to complain about it. Which is perfect for me!

[blc]

If I do go down the USB sound card route can anyone suggest a suitable one to buy? Will a cheap one be adequate (I'll only be using the 3.5mm jack)?

If you're still after a USB sound card, I can heartily recommend the Behringer UCA202. They're around £20 - can probably find them far cheaper on ebay, et al - and also have photo outputs, as well as having a 3.5mm headphone jack. They've had some pretty blistering reviews for such a cheap product. Although you will find that many "pro audio" types scorn Behringer products because they produce sound quality that's more than equal to their own gear which they've spend hundreds/thousands on... (Good quality does not always have to mean very expensive)

There's also a headphone amp built in, but I'm not sure how well you'd fare in using a set of speakers on the 3.5mm jack - although the same could be said for any headphone amplifier: they're not really designed for speakers... If you only have a 3.5mm connection for your speakers, you'd be better off in using a phono-to-3.5mm cable and connecting it to the phono jacks.

[gegs]

Can you confirm that the Behringer UCA202 works with the Joggler? If so, does it work with the stock OS?
I was going to buy one of these for the optical output but even at £20 (ish) it would be an expensive item if it didn't work.

I'd love a neat alternative to my current USB card with S/PDIF out, which is currently an ancient VOIP handset with soundcard capability.

--- EDIT ---
A very late edit to one of my old questions. Having bought the UCA202 I can confirm that it works realy well. It has phono input and output, 3.5mm headphone out with volume control and optical S/PDIF out too. Another good thing about the device is that it has a phono passthrough switch, which allows you to attach another device to the card and pass the audio out through the analogue phono connections without processing by the DAC. This is useful for occasional playing of other devices through my hi-fi, such as iPods, without having to fiddle with the connections at the rear of my amp.

[blc]

Can you confirm that the Behringer UCA202 works with the Joggler? If so, does it work with the stock OS?
I was going to buy one of these for the optical output but even at £20 (ish) it would be an expensive item if it didn't work.

I'd love a neat alternative to my current USB card with S/PDIF out, which is currently an ancient VOIP handset with soundcard capability.

In theory it should be fine: it's properly compliant with USB audio standards and I've used it natively under WinXP/7, Linux and Mac OS X without any need for special drivers. My PnP build is pretty much stock; the only thing I've done is to stop LMS from starting up automatically and added the CIFS kernel module - neither of which should affect a sound card. I don't actually plan to use the UCA202 with the Joggler - it's the main output device for my PC! - but I've found it to be a fantastic little audio interface for the price.

I'll test this evening and report back. I should be able to test the S/PDIF out by hooking it up to my MiniDisc recorder (my stereo seems to have thrown its toys out the pram when it comes to S/PDIF inputs...)

[blc]

Can you confirm that the Behringer UCA202 works with the Joggler? If so, does it work with the stock OS?
I was going to buy one of these for the optical output but even at £20 (ish) it would be an expensive item if it didn't work.

I'd love a neat alternative to my current USB card with S/PDIF out, which is currently an ancient VOIP handset with soundcard capability.

I'll test this evening and report back.

If a picture tells a thousand words, a video tells...er...a million...?

http://youtu.be/-Kfkd0HadTw

[alcoheca]

I'm using the built in sound card through the headphone output connected to an amplifier. There's a way to increase the joggler's maximum audio output to 100%. The driver is patched to limit the maximum output, I just removed the lines of code which did this then recompiled the kernel module.

I can host this somewhere if it's of use - I would NOT recommend using the built-in speaker as it breaks up at full power (and sounds terrible anyway).

[alcoheca]

Infact, here it is,
extract the zip,
scp snd-hda-intel.so to your joggler,
move to /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-lpia/kernel/sound/pci/hda/,
then reboot

[gothi]

Infact, here it is,
extract the zip,
scp snd-hda-intel.so to your joggler,
move to /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-lpia/kernel/sound/pci/hda/,
then reboot

Thank you, in one simple action you've made my Joggler's far more enjoyable (the low sound volume always annoyed me something rotten)

[alcoheca]

Great stuff! I'm happy about that

[multiplex]

@alcheca

I tried your modified file on one of my Jogglers and it made the speakers crackle all the time, but it also didn't seem to affect the volume of speakers I had plugged in to the headset socket - do these sound devices had separate outputs these days? (I was just assuming that headset socket was wired to the little speakers in the case and cut them off when the headset was plugged it - maybe that's old fashioned!)

[alcoheca]

no they're not separate. it just seems that the internal speakers can't cope with the full output, hence it being limited by the driver's source code. As I said above you should only use this if you're using the headphone/line outputs.

If the issue is that the speakers continue making noise while you've got something plugged in, then no, I don't experience that so have no idea..

[multiplex]

Thanks - I'll try again...

EDIT: working nicely with some speakers from the JVC micro stereo that the Jogger is replacing I thought I was going to need and external amp but right now I have the Squeezeplay volume just off the max for night time listening. Not loud enough for a party but I have the HiFi downstairs for that!

[alcoheca]

Thanks - I'll try again...

EDIT: working nicely with some speakers from the JVC micro stereo that the Jogger is replacing I thought I was going to need and external amp but right now I have the Squeezeplay volume just off the max for night time listening. Not loud enough for a party but I have the HiFi downstairs for that!

great stuff!

[kim57]

After installng this 'scp snd-hda-intel' master range is increased from 0 to 31, thanks alcoheca, I putty and paste '/usr/bin/amixer sset 'Master',0 31' volume now ideal into receiver, however after joggler restarts volume drops back to 20. Is there a way to fix the 31 setting post power cuts? currently running pnpIII, Thanks for any help

[alcoheca]

kim57 see a few posts up - http://www.jogglerwiki.com/forum/viewto ... =355#p7890

[alcoheca]

and actually read the next few ones after that if you don't get it to work.

note that 31 is a 100% output on the built in card