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My understanding is that fossapup64 9.5 uses alsa, but I don't know if it uses pulse, and I could not find the configuration files for pulse (because i'm a noob?).
Problem: most tutorials for improving audio (especially for HDA Intel cards) online use pulse.
Perhaps puppy is set up to use something other than pulse? What is, and Where is the configuration file that I could do this kind of thing to puppy?
Hallo, @orineu :-
Ok, I'll accept you aren't a re-incarnation of orrin! 
Now; PulseAudio (horrid thing). You're in luck, because this was covered quite recently in the "Fossapup user contributed packages" thread. Grey gives instructions on how to install a newly-compiled PulseAudio which he provides here:-
It all works nicely, and installs a functioning PulseAudio set-up in Fossapup64 9.5. Generally I'm totally anti-PA - much prefer ALSA - but I decided to give this all a try just to see what happens. Make sure to follow the instructions carefully.....and the following two or three posts have some relevant info as well.
Let us know how you get on, please.
Mike. 
Ok, so i was able to do all of these things without breaking anything, and it basically added gain to the existing sound so it's louder, but now i'm getting speaker distortion like the speaker is topped out. It's also still compressed ("tinny") despite my adding those audiophile configurations to Pulse (they didn't change anything), and it still sounds like it's coming from only one speaker in the middle of my laptop instead of my normal two speakers.
Could Puppy not be detecting my actual speakers at all? Like maybe it's using some motherboard speaker instead of my Bang & Olufsen speakers? how would i check this? when i run "pactl list cards short" i get 2 cards that are both listed as alsa_card so I'm assuming that if alsa doesn't detect the card, pulse can't touch it.
this is what shows for aplay -l , none of those look like Bang & Olufsen (should come up as Realtek, i think??). When I look up similar issues online, the windows solution for not detecting them is to perform a full operating system reset... but like the ntfs access, that doesn't seem like it should be an issue for linux??
Code: Select all
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC295 Analog [ALC295 Analog]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 9: HDMI 3 [HDMI 3]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 10: HDMI 4 [HDMI 4]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0it still sounds like it's coming from only one speaker in the middle of my laptop instead of my normal two speakers
There are speakers, and there is the tiny "speaker" (pc speaker) on the motherboard, more like a buzzer than a speaker. a bit like those Christmas cards with audio.
Maybe you are playing through the pc speaker?
The sound would be really really bad.
You could disable the pc speaker temporarily by typing
modprobe -r pcspkr snd_pcsp
Does that stop your sound? It shouldn't.
PS did you try running speaker-test -c2 (-c2 for 2 channels) ?
williams2 wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 9:19 pmit still sounds like it's coming from only one speaker in the middle of my laptop instead of my normal two speakers
There are speakers, and there is the tiny "speaker" (pc speaker) on the motherboard, more like a buzzer than a speaker. a bit like those Christmas cards with audio.
Maybe you are playing through the pc speaker?
The sound would be really really bad.
Yes, this is what I meant by "tinny and tiny", it sounded really bad! But actually it's much improved after installing and configuring Pulse Audio and restarting the whole machine (not just X) a couple times.
You could disable the pc speaker temporarily by typing
modprobe -r pcspkr snd_pcsp
Does that stop your sound? It shouldn't.
it doesn't.... this isn't the problem then. Messing around with Pulse i was able to isolate the left and right channels from Chrome and they are being routed to left and right speakers after all - but very quiet.... Setting Pulse to increase the gain by about 5-6 dB does bring it to the volume I expected from Windows, but it still sounds kind of compressed. Now I need to find an equalizer....
PS did you try running
speaker-test -c2(-c2 for 2 channels) ?
This is the same thing as what the sound card wizard does, right? it plays a quiet "pink noise" on each side of the speaker bar. They are supposed to be the same noise, right? the left one is pitched like 5 notes lower than the right one.
If you are actually using Pulse Audio and have everything needed installed.
There is a volume control interface GUI for it called pavucontrol.
Try entering pavucontrol in a terminal.
Press enter to run it.
If get message not found or no command found.
Need to install it.
In Puppy Package Manager(PPM)
Enter pavucontrol in the search.
Should find it.
Download and install.
Try pavucontrol in terminal again.
The things you do not tell us, are usually the clue to fixing the problem.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be older.
This is not what I expected 