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hashstat

Member

Registered: 2013-05-24

Posts: 23

[SOLVED] Upgrading alsa-lib breaks USB speakers in Pulseaudio

Today I performed a system update on my Dell laptop that upgraded alsa-lib, alsa-plugins, and alsa-utils from 1.1.6-1 to 1.1.7-1. After rebooting my computer, my external speakers are no longer available under Pulseaudio. The sound card, which is on a Dell TB16 docking station and shows as a USB device, can still play audio using aplay. But it disappeared from the Pulseaudio configuration. `systemctl --user status pulseaudio.service` shows the following:

● pulseaudio.service - Sound Service
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2018-10-22 15:33:45 PDT; 1min 23s ago
 Main PID: 1811 (pulseaudio)
   CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/pulseaudio.service
           ├─1811 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no
           └─1815 /usr/lib/pulse/gsettings-helper

Oct 22 15:33:44 servo systemd[1721]: Starting Sound Service...
Oct 22 15:33:45 servo pulseaudio[1811]: E: [pulseaudio] module-alsa-card.c: Failed to find a working profile.
Oct 22 15:33:45 servo pulseaudio[1811]: E: [pulseaudio] module.c: Failed to load module "module-alsa-card" (argument: "device_id="1" name="usb-Generic_USB_Audio_200901010001-00" card_name="alsa_card.usb-Generic_USB_Audio_200901010001-00" namereg_fail=false tsched=yes fixed_latency_range=no ignore_dB=no deferred_volume=yes use_ucm=yes card_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1""): initialization failed.
Oct 22 15:33:45 servo pulseaudio[1811]: E: [pulseaudio] module.c: Module "module-dbus-protocol" should be loaded once at most. Refusing to load.
Oct 22 15:33:45 servo systemd[1721]: Started Sound Service.
Oct 22 15:33:45 servo pulseaudio[1811]: E: [pulseaudio] backend-ofono.c: Failed to register as a handsfree audio agent with ofono: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.ofono was not provided by any .service files

If I downgrade alsa-lib to 1.1.6-1, everything works fine again. I've compared the output of alsa-info.sh and there isn't any significant difference. I compared the output of `pactl list` and the only difference is the missing card. I did notice that the new arugments for module-alsa-card contain an additional parameter: "tsched=yes". Could this be the cause of my problems? I've reached the end of my Alsa and Pulseaudio knowledge. Any help is much appreciated.

Last edited by hashstat (2018-10-23 16:52:52)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,657

Re: [SOLVED] Upgrading alsa-lib breaks USB speakers in Pulseaudio

tsched=yes is normal since quite a while and not the cause of the issue. This might simply be a broken identifier due to changes in alsa-lib, these do tend to happen. Can you try if resetting your pulse configuration helps here?

hashstat

Member

Registered: 2013-05-24

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] Upgrading alsa-lib breaks USB speakers in Pulseaudio

Thank you for the suggestion V1del. Unfortunately, it did not solve the issue.

hashstat

Member

Registered: 2013-05-24

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] Upgrading alsa-lib breaks USB speakers in Pulseaudio

I went into debug mode this morning. I disabled autospawning of pulseaudio (masked the service) and started it in a terminal with debugging enabled. Then in another terminal I attempted to load the module using pactl.
I was able to load the card manually using:

pactl load-module module-alsa-card device_id="1" name="usb-Generic_USB_Audio_200901010001-00" card_name="alsa_card.usb-Generic_USB_Audio_200901010001-00" namereg_fail=false tsched=yes fixed_latency_range=no ignore_dB=no deferred_volume=yes use_ucm=no card_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1"

The key parameter is "use_ucm=no". Using "use_ucm=yes" fails. Now I'm trying to figure out how to make this permanent.

hashstat

Member

Registered: 2013-05-24

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] Upgrading alsa-lib breaks USB speakers in Pulseaudio

Is the best method of persisting this configuration to put the "load-module module-alsa-card device_id="1" ..." command in default.pa, either in ~/.config/pulse or /etc/pulse? Or is there a better way?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,657

Re: [SOLVED] Upgrading alsa-lib breaks USB speakers in Pulseaudio

Good catch!

You could do it that way, though hardcoding soundcards can usually be a bit iffy and break autodetection/fallovers. FWIW if nothing on your system relies on ucm you can instead disable ucm globally by appending use_ucm=0 to the load-module module-udev-detect line in your /etc/pulse/default.pa

Afaik UCM information is mostly used for ASoC chips in chromebooks and similar and should not really have any ill effects on anything else. Maybe your dock got (mistakenly?) added to some compatibility list and now an incompatible UCM is being loaded.

Last edited by V1del (2018-10-23 16:38:35)

hashstat

Member

Registered: 2013-05-24

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] Upgrading alsa-lib breaks USB speakers in Pulseaudio

Thanks V1del! Works like a charm.

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,190

Re: [SOLVED] Upgrading alsa-lib breaks USB speakers in Pulseaudio

This is probably a bug in alsa-lib that has been fixed in git, but is not in the arch package yet.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaud … issues/572

http://git.alsa-project.org/?p=alsa-lib … 1231df3c5c

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hashstat

Member

Registered: 2013-05-24

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] Upgrading alsa-lib breaks USB speakers in Pulseaudio

progandy: Looks like that is another, and probably better, solution. When I revert my changes to /etc/pulse/default.pa and apply the changes in the patch to /usr/share/alsa/ucm/Dell-WD15-Dock/HiFi.conf, the USB sound card works again. The device is, however, displayed a bit different in Gnome's audio settings, but it will work. Thanks for the update!