PC Beep Volume - Hardware/Driver Experts Please Help
Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 2:54 pm
Hi all,
Just got my new X60s, and I like it a lot, many details I like about it (the keyboard feel, the thinklight, the trackpoint, and so on) and a few I would change if I could (switch the fn and ctrl keys, move esc where f1 is, remove the browser keys), etc. One thing that I would like to change, and feel ought to be possible, is the volume of the various beeps. I think the beeps are useful (especially the "you just pulled out the power cord" and the "I'm still trying to go to sleep, don't pick me up just yet" beeps, but they are very loud in comparison to the rest of the computer's sounds). I've read other people complaining about this, so I don't think it's that my X60s is simply faulty. I know it's possible to deactivate the various beeps (either in BIOS, or with PS2 utility, or some of them with the power manager, and the "you pressed too many keys at once" my disabling a hidden device in windows device manager), but as I said, I find them useful, just wish they weren't so loud....
So I did some research. The X60s apparently used the AD1981HD codec, whose datasheet is here:
http://www.analog.com/UploadedFiles/Dat ... 81HD_0.pdf
and the block diagram on page 1 indicates that it can take either analog or digital "PC BEEP" input. It also shows that there is a gain control for the PC BEEP (part of NID:0D), so, on the assumption that the beeps are wired through either the analog or digital PC BEEP on the AD1981HD, it ought to be possible to change their volume. Now, the windows "master volume" applet doesn't give me an option to change PC BEEP volume (it has Master, Wave, SW Synth, Microphone, CD Player) as options. However, my understanding is that intel HD audio should be possible to control with a generic driver, so I'm hoping perhaps someone knows a generic HD driver with more controls than the windows volume applet (or maybe registry settings or similar, to activate additional controls).
Alternatively, I'm assuming that ALSA, or other open-source sound architectures, probably give you a large degree of control over setting all the different audio hardware registers, so maybe someone running Linux on their X60/s has managed to reduce the beep volume? Or has tried, and can show that my guesses for how the audio hardware is wired up, are wrong, and I should give up on trying to perform this particular tweak.
Thanks for any advice or pointers,
Lev
PS: One tip I've discovered, which I've never seen written anywhere, is that when the windows volume applet is open, you can press ctrl-S to toggle it between a large and small mode. Which is handy on the small screen of the X60/s.
Just got my new X60s, and I like it a lot, many details I like about it (the keyboard feel, the thinklight, the trackpoint, and so on) and a few I would change if I could (switch the fn and ctrl keys, move esc where f1 is, remove the browser keys), etc. One thing that I would like to change, and feel ought to be possible, is the volume of the various beeps. I think the beeps are useful (especially the "you just pulled out the power cord" and the "I'm still trying to go to sleep, don't pick me up just yet" beeps, but they are very loud in comparison to the rest of the computer's sounds). I've read other people complaining about this, so I don't think it's that my X60s is simply faulty. I know it's possible to deactivate the various beeps (either in BIOS, or with PS2 utility, or some of them with the power manager, and the "you pressed too many keys at once" my disabling a hidden device in windows device manager), but as I said, I find them useful, just wish they weren't so loud....
So I did some research. The X60s apparently used the AD1981HD codec, whose datasheet is here:
http://www.analog.com/UploadedFiles/Dat ... 81HD_0.pdf
and the block diagram on page 1 indicates that it can take either analog or digital "PC BEEP" input. It also shows that there is a gain control for the PC BEEP (part of NID:0D), so, on the assumption that the beeps are wired through either the analog or digital PC BEEP on the AD1981HD, it ought to be possible to change their volume. Now, the windows "master volume" applet doesn't give me an option to change PC BEEP volume (it has Master, Wave, SW Synth, Microphone, CD Player) as options. However, my understanding is that intel HD audio should be possible to control with a generic driver, so I'm hoping perhaps someone knows a generic HD driver with more controls than the windows volume applet (or maybe registry settings or similar, to activate additional controls).
Alternatively, I'm assuming that ALSA, or other open-source sound architectures, probably give you a large degree of control over setting all the different audio hardware registers, so maybe someone running Linux on their X60/s has managed to reduce the beep volume? Or has tried, and can show that my guesses for how the audio hardware is wired up, are wrong, and I should give up on trying to perform this particular tweak.
Thanks for any advice or pointers,
Lev
PS: One tip I've discovered, which I've never seen written anywhere, is that when the windows volume applet is open, you can press ctrl-S to toggle it between a large and small mode. Which is handy on the small screen of the X60/s.