[pulseaudio-discuss] Splitting ALSA card ports into

[S0lll0s]

>> > Hello everyone,
>> > I am trying to get simultaneous output on the Line Out and 
>> Headphones
>> > outputs of my Intel HD Audio (AsRock Z97 motherboard) chipset and 
>> PC
>> > case. With the default pulseaudio configuration in pavucontrol I 
>> can
>> > choose Analog Stereo Duplex and then select either the "Line Out" 
>> or
>> > "Headphones" port under "Output Devices", but I would like to have
>> > simultaneous output on both (by having a seperate sink for each).
>> >
>> > Here is my alsa-info.sh output, please ignore the NVidia output
>> > provided by my GPU as I would like to not use it if possible:
>> >
> 
> http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=b7e5097f7a899aa5294b147b23cbb877db3b6f3c
>> > And this is what "pacmd list-sinks" says about the Built-In audio 
>> sink:
>> > http://hastebin.com/bonadehimu
>>
>> It's not possible to have independent line out and headphone output 
>> on
>> your hardware. There is only one analog device on your card.
>>
>> --
>
> The easy way to output same audio to both output is disable drivers 
> auto
> mute mode and change pulseaudio conf files
>
> Simple mixer control 'Auto-Mute Mode',0
> Capabilities: enum
> Items: 'Disabled' 'Enabled'
> Item0: 'Enabled'
>
> 
> http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/boards-and-kits/desktop-boards/000007156.html
>
> 
> https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/tiwai/sound.git/tree/Documentation/sound/alsa/HD-Audio.txt
>
> You have to ask Tiwai to enable independent hp for your realtek codec 
> on
> desktop ( e.g. no internal mic and hda controller
> support enough SDO)
>
> You can specify hint indep_hp=1 by early patching,  the driver
> automatically disable automute when you switch on independent hp 
> switch
>
> 
> https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/tiwai/sound.git/tree/Documentation/sound/alsa/HD-Audio-Controls.txt
>
> Independent HP When this enum control is enabled, the headphone 
> output is
> routed from an individual stream (the third PCM such as hw:0,2) 
> instead of
> the primary stream

Okay, so following your advice I set up modprobe.d to specify the 
early-patching files:

$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/snd_hda_intel.conf
options snd_hda_intel patch=onboard-patch,hdmi-patch

and specified the hint in /lib/firmware/onboard-patch:

$ cat /lib/firmware/onboard-patch
[codec]
0x10ec0892 0x1849d892 0

[hint]
indep_hp = 1

this seems to work fine, I can query the card hints and indep_hp shows 
up:

$ cat /sys/class/sound/hwC0D0/hints
indep_hp = 1

but pulseaudio still only shows one sink. Do I need to manually load 
another sink module?