ALSA only system: No tone/treble/bass [Fix]

[De-Javu]

Maybe this sound be in Documentation/Tips/Tricks? Apologies if it is the wrong place

Problem:
In an ALSA-only system is analog output of the PC sounds "wrong" (very tinny, no bass, all treble, harsh sound). This affects my Realtek chipset (ALC3220) but seems others have had this issue over the years with different chipsets. I don't use pulseaudio, pipewire, JACK, etc - plain ALSA only.
Example 1: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-491011-start-0.html
Example 2: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-463525-start-0.html


Solutions:
1) Check in alsamixer for a mute/unmute only option called "Speaker" - try muting this option. The tone of the audio should become normal immediately. Example: https://i.ibb.co/6XLrRNB/Untitled.jpg
2) I can also use qasmixer from media-sound/qastools to fix this. Example: https://i.ibb.co/pzS6DrP/Untitled.jpg


This seems to be a recurring problem for people over the years, which is never answered properly on the Gentoo forums, however since all the threads addressing this problem are many years old, I didn't want to bump them.

[soundrolf]

Please check:
Show the output of:

[De-Javu]