[MPlayer-users] 100% volume isn't full volume

[The Wanderer]

On 2024-08-16 at 10:51, arthurpeabody wrote:

> mplayer only lets me raise the volume to 100%; pavucontrol lets me
> raise it to 153%.  For some quiet inputs I want more than 100%.
> Oddly, pactl doesn't let me raise it above 100.  I  don't understand
> what's going on.  pactl reports only 1 available sink.

IIRC, MPlayer has two modes for volume control. One of them is activated
by the '-softvol' and/or '-af volume=' options (it's been long enough
that I don't remember all the details); it implements volume
amplification inside MPlayer. With that mode, changes to the volume of
playback affect only MPlayer, and do not affect other programs - but if
you change the volume while a file is playing, that change will be lost
when the program exits (and possibly even just when the file is done
playing).

The other connects the MPlayer volume-control commands to the (a?)
system mixer device, which has its own volume setting. With that mode,
changing the volume from within MPlayer should affect the volume for
*all* programs, or at least all programs which are using that same
mixer.


If you're using the latter mode, I'm fairly sure any maximum volume
limits are the limits of the audio-output method you're using. I don't
think there's anything to be done to affect that, at least not on
MPlayer's side.

If you're using the former method, there are a few settings you might
want to look at.

'-softvol-max' only applies when using the former method, and lets you
explicitly specify how high the multiplier that MPlayer's volume slider
applies to the default volume level can go. You can set it anywhere from
10 (a multiplier of 0.1 - i.e., you can't raise the volume above 10% of
its default) to 10000 (a multiplier of 100 - i.e., you can raise the
volume to 100x its default).

'-volume' lets you specify where, in the volume slider, the volume
amplification will start. If you set it to 0, the volume will always
start effectively muted; if you set it to 100, the volume will always
start as high as possible (whether that's controlled by the system audio
mixer, or by the '-softvol-max' setting, or by something else).

'-af volume=<gain>[:<softclip>]' lets you explicitly enable software
volume control, and explicitly specify how many decibels of gain to
apply to the default volume level. <gain> is the decibel value to apply,
and <softclip> is either 1 (try to reduce 'noise' at high volume with
some speakers) or 0 (don't try to do that, to avoid distortion).

How exactly '-softvol' and '-af volume=' interact I'm not certain
offhand. I've been running for... well over a decade, albeit not two...
with 'softvol=yes' and 'softvol-max=350' set in my config file, and so
don't have a lot of experience with varying these settings.

The above is taken largely from a combination of distant recollections,
and reading the man page (with a search for 'volume').

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.         -- George Bernard Shaw

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