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TimelyTime

Member

Registered: 2023-04-21

Posts: 4

[SOLVED] Line Out only plays sound when Headphones are unplugged

So, the problem is in the title, no matter what I do, my speakers that are connected to line out don’t play any sound until I unplug my headphones. I’m using kde with pipewire. With both headphones and speakers plugged in simultaneously selecting line out in kde system settings cuts the sound completely, selecting headphones works as expected and sound is coming from the headphones. Not sure where to start troubleshooting this.

Last edited by TimelyTime (2023-04-21 16:53:02)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,836

Re: [SOLVED] Line Out only plays sound when Headphones are unplugged

Most audio cards have a driver internal "Auto-Mute" control which will cut the audio on a  driver level, you'll want to set that to false, check/post

aplay -l
amixer -c0 #Replace the 0 here with the correct card index of your card

(you can also look at the card in alsamixer if you prefer a more grahical representation, but for posting to the boards the textual representation of amixer is more readable. Check whether an Auto-Mute control exists and switch that to disabled.

Last edited by V1del (2023-04-21 13:59:45)

TimelyTime

Member

Registered: 2023-04-21

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Line Out only plays sound when Headphones are unplugged

Yep, that worked, thanks for your help. May I ask what's the point of having Auto Mute on by default? Is it a driver bug? Can't see why someone would want this to be the default.

Last edited by TimelyTime (2023-04-21 16:55:36)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,836

Re: [SOLVED] Line Out only plays sound when Headphones are unplugged

No it's a configurable setting that happens to have that as a default. As for the point, ask e.g. laptop users what they want to happen by default when plugging in headphones. Configurable options are there to be configured, just because you disagree with the default doesn't make it a bug

TimelyTime

Member

Registered: 2023-04-21

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Line Out only plays sound when Headphones are unplugged

I'm not trying to argue here, I'm just genuinely confused about the possible use case and trying to understand the situation. Playing through the headphones works as expected whether Auto-Mute is on or off, so I don't really understand your laptop example. Is it a collision between KDE and a driver? As in driver mutes my speakers for playback to go through the headphones and KDE mutes the headphones for the playback to go through the speakers? Otherwise I really don't understand how having no sound at all while specifically requesting it to go through the speakers is a sane default that serves any purpose.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,836

Re: [SOLVED] Line Out only plays sound when Headphones are unplugged

If Auto-Mute wasn't off, then a laptop user would have the sound blasting from both at the same time. KDE is irrelevant here, this is strictly the driver disabling output from the speakers when the headphone jack detects something. What could indeed happen is that if you toggle to the speakers that it should implicitly disable Auto-Mute, but this hasn't historically been done within pipewire/pulseaudio for reasons I'm also not sure about (... could be done with appropriate profile configs), but in any case this is something you can configure directly on the kernel/ALSA

TimelyTime

Member

Registered: 2023-04-21

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Line Out only plays sound when Headphones are unplugged

Alright, got it, thanks.