Pulseaudio sound only if pavucontrol is running [Solved (kind of)]

Physkaj · 2015-05-17 17:48:14

Some month ago my sound stopped working. No matter what I do I cannot seem to get any sound from any program without having pavucontrol running. Pavucontrol often takes a long time to start while connecting to the pulseaudio daemon and leaves the whole system unresponsive meanwhile. It seems pulseaudio becomes inactive without pavucontrol because if I for example run 'mpc play' the ourput is 'ERROR: Failed to open audio output' (if pavucontrol is running it works flawlessly).

I have tried to disable any extra modules in default.pa and played around with autospawning on/off but the behavior is the same.

I load my sound card manually with

load-module module-alsa-sink
load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:0,0

since I am not using the digital output. I also load the TCP protocol to make MPD work:

load-module module-native-protocol-tcp auth-ip-acl=127.0.0.1

otherwise my configuration is to my knowledge the default one. Appreciate some advice if you have any.

Last edited by Physkaj (2015-05-18 18:24:55)

Kinokoio · 2015-05-17 19:57:01

(Just curious) Is pulseaudio running when pavucontrol is not?

Physkaj · 2015-05-17 20:38:18

Yes, but it seems any applications cannot communicate with it.

I also found out that if I disable the suspend-on-idle module I can run audio apps without pavucontrol but with a delay of about 0.5 s (extra delay first time an audio app is starting). Seems to be an issue establishing new connections to the sink. However, with the suspend-on-idle module activated the audio stops if I would termiante pavucontrol.

I have also tried disabling the network module but there was no difference.

Knute · 2015-05-17 21:27:05

What does pactl info show you?

Physkaj · 2015-05-17 21:33:43

Knute wrote:

What does pactl info show you?

Server String: /run/user/1000/pulse/native
Library Protocol Version: 30
Server Protocol Version: 30
Is Local: yes
Client Index: 7
Tile Size: 65472
User Name: private_username
Host Name: private_hostname
Server Name: pulseaudio
Server Version: 6.0
Default Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
Default Channel Map: front-left,front-right
Default Sink: alsa_output.default
Default Source: alsa_input.hw_0_0
Cookie: 7c5a:5572

nomorewindows · 2015-05-17 21:38:38

I would think that using pavucontrol would just be triggering pulseaudio away from alsa. But even then, pulseaudio gets strange with audio hardware and won't even recognize it (calls it dummy device).

Physkaj · 2015-05-17 22:12:37

Now things are getting weird. I wanted to assure that I really ran the default configuration, so I moved /etc/pulse and reinstalled pulseaudio and libpulse. Now everything works except for a few seconds upstart time the first time audio is played.

However, using vimdiff, I checked what the difference between the two configuration sets was. There was none! So a reinstallation solved my problem (I even rebooted to make sure) but the configuration is the same as before. Now reinstalling should only work for windows right? Could the reinstallation trigger some cache update or what has happend?

Last edited by Physkaj (2015-05-17 22:14:03)

Knute · 2015-05-17 22:21:22

I'm curious if you checked just the default.pa file or all of them for differences.
Either way, I'm glad that you got it fixed. You may want to edit your first post and add (Solved) to it.

nomorewindows · 2015-05-17 22:28:14

Knute wrote:

I'm curious if you checked just the default.pa file or all of them for differences.
Either way, I'm glad that you got it fixed. You may want to edit your first post and add (Solved) to it.

I'm not sure it has been fixed...

Physkaj · 2015-05-17 22:37:24

Knute wrote:

I'm curious if you checked just the default.pa file or all of them for differences.
Either way, I'm glad that you got it fixed. You may want to edit your first post and add (Solved) to it.

I checked default.pa, client.conf, system.conf and daemon.conf which are all files present in /etc/pulse.

nomorewindows wrote:

I'm not sure it has been fixed...

Neither am I, but something seems to have changed. I will leave the post as it is until I can test things more properly tomorrow. If the problems do not reappear I will change my post. Unfortunately I still have no idea what was wrong in the first place or what the solution really was.

Physkaj · 2015-05-18 18:24:31

The change seems persistent. Only problem is that pulseaudio takes quite a long time to load the first time. After that everything just seems to work. Very weird behavior...

Arch Linux

#1 2015-05-17 17:48:14

Pulseaudio sound only if pavucontrol is running [Solved (kind of)]

#2 2015-05-17 19:57:01

Re: Pulseaudio sound only if pavucontrol is running [Solved (kind of)]

#3 2015-05-17 20:38:18

Re: Pulseaudio sound only if pavucontrol is running [Solved (kind of)]

#4 2015-05-17 21:27:05

Re: Pulseaudio sound only if pavucontrol is running [Solved (kind of)]

#5 2015-05-17 21:33:43

Re: Pulseaudio sound only if pavucontrol is running [Solved (kind of)]

#6 2015-05-17 21:38:38

Re: Pulseaudio sound only if pavucontrol is running [Solved (kind of)]

#7 2015-05-17 22:12:37

Re: Pulseaudio sound only if pavucontrol is running [Solved (kind of)]

#8 2015-05-17 22:21:22

Re: Pulseaudio sound only if pavucontrol is running [Solved (kind of)]

#9 2015-05-17 22:28:14

Re: Pulseaudio sound only if pavucontrol is running [Solved (kind of)]

#10 2015-05-17 22:37:24

Re: Pulseaudio sound only if pavucontrol is running [Solved (kind of)]

#11 2015-05-18 18:24:31

Re: Pulseaudio sound only if pavucontrol is running [Solved (kind of)]

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