[pulseaudio-discuss] Front audio panel "forgets" state after reboot, no sound until replug

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Fri, 2016-03-25 at 13:47 +0100, 紅 蒼穹 wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm using pulseaudio 8.0 on arch linux x64 with the KDE desktop. I
> have my speakers connected to the rear panel of my ALC889 soundcard
> and the headphones are connected to the front panel. 
> When I connect the headphones, the sound gets redirected to the front
> panel as expected. However, if I let them plugged in and restart,
> then there is neither any sound from the rear panel, nor the front
> panel.
> 
> To get the sound working again, I have to unplug the headphones. Any
> Idea what might be causing this, and is there a way to make it
> remember I have my headphones plugged into the front panel?
> Please tell me if you need more info.

This happens for me too if the last profile I manually selected on the
sound card was a surround profile (however, I get sound from the
speakers unlike you, but the kernel driver might auto-mute the speaker
output in your case). The code that is responsible for automatically
switching between headphones and speakers doesn't work correctly during
startup if the selected profile is not the analog stereo profile.

So, what profile is initially active when this happens? If it's not the
stereo profile, then it's probably the same issue that I observe here.
You can check the profile with command

    LANG=C pactl list cards | grep "Active Profile"

-- 
Tanu