Arch Linux

vinicius

Member

Registered: 2009-02-07

Posts: 37

[SOLVED] Default sound card switching randomly

Hi there

I've been experiencing a strange problem: from time to time, my sound just die. I mean, when the computer boots, sound works and keeps working for a while. Eventually, there is no sound anymore.

At first, I tried to reinstall some sound packages like alsa-lib, alsa-plugins, pulseaudio-alsa, lib32-alsa-lib, lib32-alsa-plugins, libcanberra-pulse, libpulse, pulseaudio-alsa, and some others. But the issue didn't change. (Just for the record: I'm with Arch 64)

I've also tried some configuration changes without success. So I've found a hint:

After boot, alsamixer shows me:
Card: HDA Intel
Chip: Realtek ALC663

When the sound stops working, alsamixer shows:
Card: PulseAudio
Chip: PulseAudio

If I try to change the card by pressing F6, as soon as I close alsamixer PulseAudio comes back to default.

Any ideas of what is going on?

Thanks in advance!

Last edited by vinicius (2012-05-03 01:07:16)

masutu

Member

Registered: 2010-01-30

Posts: 40

Re: [SOLVED] Default sound card switching randomly

Hi,

sounds, like you have a problem with your pulseaudio configuration, here's my theory:
You don't start pulseaudio as a daemon via rc.conf. So when you boot, you use alsa as your default sound backend. At some point you start an application or window manager or whatever, which wants to use pulseaudio as default sound service. It starts the pulseaudio daemon, which is not correctly configured and you have no sound.
I might be totally wrong, but if not try to fix your pulsaudio configuration (and use it as default sound backend at startup) or try to get rid of pulseaudio, as some people would recommend.

vinicius

Member

Registered: 2009-02-07

Posts: 37

Re: [SOLVED] Default sound card switching randomly

Hi, Masutu

Pulseaudio is in my daemon array:
DAEMONS=(@syslog-ng !network crond dbus @alsa @pulseaudio)

But what you've said about some program calling pulse and crashing things makes sense. How could I "correctly configure" pulse? What do you suggest?

My /etc/asound.conf is here:

# Use PulseAudio by default

pcm.!default {
  type pulse
  fallback "sysdefault"
  hint {
    show on
    description "Default ALSA Output (currently PulseAudio Sound Server)"
  }
}

ctl.!default {
  type pulse
  fallback "sysdefault"
}

# vim:set ft=alsaconf:

It seems pretty the same what is written in some sites about pulse.

In a past time (with other computer), I just removed pulse completely. But now there is a warning about dependencies: gnome-settings-daemon and gnome-control-center. And I don't know how removing these Gnome packages will affect the window manager.

masutu

Member

Registered: 2010-01-30

Posts: 40

Re: [SOLVED] Default sound card switching randomly

I have no idea about pulseaudio and how to configure, but i would check /etc/pulseaudio/default.pa and see what's going on there (maybe check for correct device like "load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0" or so).

About removing pulseaudio completly, yes, you often run into dependency problems, i think, there are some ways to do so:
- avoid installation of packages that depend on pulseaudio
- try to build the packages which depend on pulseaudio from abs whithout pa support
- one guy (sorry, don't remember who and where) suggested, to create a pulseaudio-dummy package, which does nothing but provide pulseaudio, just to fake satisfy dependencies (never tried, but sounds reasonable)

Last edited by masutu (2012-05-03 00:41:03)

vinicius

Member

Registered: 2009-02-07

Posts: 37

Re: [SOLVED] Default sound card switching randomly

Trying to find out how to configure pulse, I installed pavucontrol and started changing every setting until... It worked!
What happened was:
In Output Devices tab, there is two devices (High Definition Audio Controller Digital Stereo, Internal Audio Analog Stereo) The first one was checked as "Set as fallback". So, I unchecked that option and checked the second device as fallback. That was the trick (but I have no idea what is that).

After reboot, everything seems to be working. I hope it keeps like that. xD

Well, I think the problem is solved!
Thanks for your help, masutu.