Emulationstation V2.8.4RP and sound issues

[Mik's Arcade]

I'm running Raspberry Pi 3 model B plus Rev 1.3.  The Pi is in a bartop machine I built and the sound comes out of a pair of 4" speakers plugged into the monitor using HDMI.

 

My problem is that the sound is just great on the emulationstation - I've got a music program that plays through a list of video game music and it is loud and clear.

 

The problem is when I run arcade games.  I've got games running mame2000, 2003, 2010 (mostly), 2014, lr-fbalpha, advmame.   Consoles seem to be fine as well, it seems limited to mame.  Odd.

 

On some, but not all games, the sound is just too low.  Usually, I can call up the dip switch settings and play with the sliders but it seems like lately almost every single game is too low.

 

I've seen a million topics on this and tried all the fixes in here

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Sound-Issues/ 

 

But I think this is a different as the sound does work.  In the sound settings, the system volume bar keeps going to 0% (thought the music is still fine), so I wonder if that causes the problem when I launch a game.  I've also seen many topics on the volume bar glitching out.

 

Now, I'm getting this message:

ALSA lib control.c:1373:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL hdmi
1v10: VolumeControl::init() - Failed to attach to default card!!)

 

Anyone have a fix for this? I'd like to at least get rid of this error. At least I do have sound.....

 

[Mik's Arcade]

well, removing this line at least made the error message go away:

 

hdmi_ignore_edid_audio=1

 

the comment does say it is not needed for ALL HDMI devices....

 

oh well, I'll just have to deal with the low sound on certain arcade games....