Preventing audio sink to go idle after a few seconds of "inactivity"

shiny_mew · 2025-10-13 15:50:51

Hi, I have a Medion Erazer WK03 soundbar as speaker on my PC, connected via AUX. After a couple seconds of "inactivity" it goes into idle mode, which wouldn't be an issue if only this inactivity was fake: it goes into idle mode even when audio is playing if said audio is considered too low by the device (which most of the time is still perfectly audible) and it won't turn on until a higher in volume sound plays once again.
I tried fixing it by uncommenting the lines quoted in this comment from a similar issue, but to no avail.

I think it's worth mentioning that it seems to not happen when connected via Bluetooth, but i prefer cabled as Bluetooth mode has a little delay... not too much but enough to bother me.

Ambos · 2025-10-13 21:07:21

Have you tried to follow the "Noticeable audio delay or audible pop/crack when starting playback" section on the ArchWiki? It mentions your low sound issue (I assume you're currently using PipeWire and checked the ouput of "pactl info").

Some devices implement their own detection of silence and suspension. For them disabling node suspention alone won't work. It's possible to work around them by adding a small amount of noise, making it so the output never goes fully silent

For your information, you can do the same on PulseAudio.

shiny_mew · 2025-10-14 09:37:09

Ambos wrote:

Have you tried to follow the "Noticeable audio delay or audible pop/crack when starting playback" section on the ArchWiki?

Yes. I tried with both the first method of disableing its standby via the conf file in

/etc/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/disable-suspension.conf

and with the white noise method but for some reason it doesn't seem to be working. Tried with a couple wave forms from dither.method and by rising the audio bits of dither.noise up to 500.

Arch Linux

#1 2025-10-13 15:50:51

Preventing audio sink to go idle after a few seconds of "inactivity"

#2 2025-10-13 21:07:21

Re: Preventing audio sink to go idle after a few seconds of "inactivity"

#3 2025-10-14 09:37:09

Re: Preventing audio sink to go idle after a few seconds of "inactivity"

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