Arch Linux

sirplatypus

Member

Registered: 2017-09-17

Posts: 25

Combine multiple sinks into single pulseaudio sink

I have seen several websites and forum threads on how to take multiple ports of a single audio sink and turn them into multiple sinks, or play sound on two sinks at once. I am looking to do just the opposite.

I have a USB speaker plugged in, and I sometimes use headphones. I was hoping to find a way to take these and combine them into one output device with multiple ports, which would make switching devices and displaying volume on the status bar much simpler.
Is this possible?

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Learning Dvorak was entirely worth it, solely because of the looks on people’s faces when they borrow my computers.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,070

Re: Combine multiple sinks into single pulseaudio sink

Use module-combine-sink if you do not pass the slaves parameter it will automatically add every other sink available. Either configure this in default.pa or use one of the pulse mixers, AFAIK nearly every mixer has a checkbox option to enable that, though most, apart from paprefs might currently be defunct due to the gconf -> gsettings changeover in pulseaudio 12.  If you want this to be a pseudo combined sink that only switches on port change I'm not sure if that is feasably doable with this.

An alternative to this would be enabling module-switch.on-connect that should automatically switch all running streams to to USB speaker on plug-in, and move them back on plug out.