Fixing low call volume on the Freerunner

Here's a workaround for fixing the one sound issue I've had with the Freerunner, namely that the people I'm calling complain that I'm too quiet. This is caused by a mixer setting which makes the mic volume on the Freerunner too low. My gratitude to the folks on the OM mailing lists who managed to piece this (very easy) solution together.

This kind of problem can be corrected just by running alsamixer while a call is in progress. Play around with the volume on the various channels until you are satisfied. In particular, raising the "Sidetone" volume seems to do the trick. This will fix the problem, at least for that call.

ASU keeps different sets of mixer settings for all sorts of scenarios (e.g. headset, handset, speakerphone, etc.). However, every time one of these scenarios is activated, ASU just loads the mixer settings from a file. If you change the settings in alsamixer, those changes never get written back to the file, so they aren't applied in the future.

To save those changes, adjust the settings to your satisfaction and then, during the call, to save your new mixer settings, do this:

alsactl -f /home/root/newsettings.state store

Use that to overwrite the file from which the mixer settings are read, which is /usr/share/openmoko/scenarios/gsmhandset.state (if you are curious, you can also play around with the other .state files in that directory).

For me, the net result of all this was the same as applying the following one-line patch to /usr/share/openmoko/scenarios/gsmhandset.state. You can try it too, if you dare:

--- old/gsmhandset.state Tue Sep 23 01:20:14 2008
+++ new/gsmhandset.state Mon Sep 22 00:16:28 2008
@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@
   comment.range '0 - 7'
   iface MIXER
   name 'Mono Sidetone Playback Volume'
-  value 2
+  value 6
  }
  control.13 {
   comment.access 'read write'