[pulseaudio-discuss] internal speaker silent in Asus eee netbook (patch)

[Guenter Milde]

Dear PulseAudio developers,

after updating my Asus eee netbook from Debian 8 to Debian 9, the internal
speaker fell silent.


System: Debian,
	pulseaudio 10.0
	Audio Device: Intel NM10/ICH7

Diagnosis:
  headphones work
  speaker: no sound despite signal shown in pavucontrol

  Note:
  Before the update, pavucontrol showed 3 outputs: audio, speaker, and
  headphone.  "audio" worked.
  After the update, the "audio" port is missing on the list.
  
Workaround: with help from 
https://debianforum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=155501
https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Backends/ALSA/Profiles/

--- /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output-speaker.conf	2017-06-18 18:03:31.000000000 +0200
+++ /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output-speaker-eeepc.conf	2017-08-04 10:57:45.035014838 +0200
@@ -84,13 +92,18 @@
 
 ; This profile path is intended to control the speaker, let's mute headphones
 ; else there will be a spike when plugging in headphones
+; change by GM: "mute" instead of turning "off", don' set volume to zero
 [Element Headphone]
-switch = off
-volume = off
+;switch = off
+;volume = off
+switch = mute
+;volume = zero
 
 [Element Headphone2]
-switch = off
-volume = off
+;switch = off
+;volume = off
+switch = mute
+;volume = zero
 
 [Element Headphone+LO]
 switch = off

I currently use a modified 
/usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/profile-sets/default.conf
as a new udev rule would require to rebuild initramfs.

Some questions:

Is this a known problem?

Why are switch and volume set to "off" in the original
analog-output-speaker.conf?

Is there a better/simpler fix?

Are there sideeffects.

Could this be achieved without root access and without changes to /usr/share/?

Thanks,

Günter