[pulseaudio-discuss] PulseAudio, switch audio output on device connection

[Mark Gaiser]

On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Tanu Kaskinen
<tanu.kaskinen at linux.intel.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2014-09-28 at 21:16 +0200, Mark Gaiser wrote:
>> Hi PulseAudio list,
>>
>> Note: please keep me in CC, i'm not registered on this list.
>>
>> I've been having this issue for as long as i use Linux (with
>> pulseaudio) but never really bothered to look into the issue and try
>> to resolve it. That's something i've been trying to tackle for a few
>> days now without any notable success.
>>
>> First to clear make my use case clear.
>> - I have a USB headset (but the same is true for jack).
>> - On windows and mac, whenever i plug in a headset (usb or jack) all
>> audio is redirected to that device.
>>
>> My linux setup:
>> - Archlinux x64 (fully up to date)
>> - KDE 4.xx
>>
>> What i want to accomplish is to have the same hassle free use case on
>> linux as it works on windows and mac. My (fairly default) default.pa
>> can be found here [1]. The only things i added (as far as i can
>> remember) is:
>> # automatically switch to newly-connected devices
>> load-module module-switch-on-connect
>>
>> Which i did because it "looked" like the thing i needed based on one
>> of the comments in [2]. It doesn't seem to do anything for me though.
>>
>> So how do i let PulseAudio redirect all audio output to (the last)
>> audio device that i connected to it? Just like it works on Windows and
>> Mac? I mean, i can change output sinks in pavucontrol, but that is
>> hardly a sane way to do every time. There must be "some" easy way out
>> there to do this, right?
>>
>> Also, it would be very nice of the audio switched sink while audio is playing.
>>
>> I prefer doing this using just default pulseaudio and linux commands.
>> I know of the "paswitch" git project somewhere that allows me to
>> switch output devices, but i don't believe that's the right way to do
>> something like this.
>>
>> I hope this list could share the appropriate way in getting this done.
>>
>> For reference, i tried the same use case in Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Magaia
>> (plug in a headset, play music and listen where the sound comes from).
>> In all cases no sound was coming out of my headset. All sound came out
>> of the speakers (that are connected via a jack plug).
>
> I don't know why it's not working for you, but here's some information
> that may help with figuring it out.
>
> The first thing to note is that USB headsets and headphones that are
> plugged into an audio jack are handled differently.
>
> The policy of moving streams to a newly plugged-in USB headset is
> handled by module-switch-on-connect. That module changes the default
> sink to a newly plugged-in sound card, and moves streams if and only if
> the following conditions are fulfilled: the stream is currently playing
> to the sink that was the old default sink, and you have not previously
> explicitly moved the stream.
>
> The policy of switching to the headphones when you plug them to an audio
> jack is handled by module-switch-on-port-available. That module never
> moves streams. Instead, it just switches the port on the sink that has
> the headphone port. I don't know the details of your setup, but if the
> jack to which you have connected the speakers is part of a different
> sink than the one that handles the headphone jack, then audio won't
> automatically move to the headphones.
>
> The above is a description how things are, not necessarily of they
> should be.
>
> --
> Tanu
>

Hi Tanu,

Thank you very much for your reply. For the moment, lets focus on the
case where a USB headset is plugged in.
In my current case (with live cd's/dvd's and a natively installed
archlinux) where the case is: (for clarity):
- Play some music using some pulseaudio enabled player
- Sound comes out of the speakers (jack connection)
- Plug in a USB headset
- Sound is still being send to the connected speakers (jack) and not
the newly attached headphone (usb)

This is repeatable for me on a multitude of distributions, even with
completely different hardware (same usb headset every time).

Therefore i doubt a fault in my configurations since i would expect
distributions like magaia, ubuntu and kubuntu to have this sorted out
of the box. Anyway, for reference, my settings again:
http://pastebin.com/NL7hbvS6

Is there any test i can run to debug this issue and figure out where
things go wrong?

Cheers,
Mark