[pulseaudio-discuss] USB headset Steelseries Arctis troubleshooting

[Johan Heikkilä]

Hello,

I have a Steelseries Artcis 7 wireless USB headset. It is working by
tweaking pulseaudio. I'm quite sure the same problem applies to Arctis
series 5, too (based on what people have been discussing on the Internet).

Now I'm wondering if anyone know if something must be changed on pulseaudio
side or in alsa to make it work automatically when attaching the headset.

When attaching the headset, there is only a mono analog output device shown
in Gnome sound settings. This headset has kind of a separate voice channel
that is meant for adjusting voice chat level separately. This works fine,
but of course it would be nice to have the stereo device working as well.
Now I have to run pacmd to make the stereo channel visible.

Alsa shows both devices:
aplay -l

card 1: S7 [SteelSeries Arctis 7], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: S7 [SteelSeries Arctis 7], device 1: USB Audio [USB Audio #1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

The first device is the mono device. The second device which is stereo
isn't shown in Gnome sound settings so it can't be selected.

aplay -L

sysdefault:CARD=S7
    SteelSeries Arctis 7, USB Audio
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=S7,DEV=0
    SteelSeries Arctis 7, USB Audio
    Front speakers
surround21:CARD=S7,DEV=0
    SteelSeries Arctis 7, USB Audio
    2.1 Surround output to Front and Subwoofer speakers
surround40:CARD=S7,DEV=0
    SteelSeries Arctis 7, USB Audio
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=S7,DEV=0
    SteelSeries Arctis 7, USB Audio
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=S7,DEV=0
    SteelSeries Arctis 7, USB Audio
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=S7,DEV=0
    SteelSeries Arctis 7, USB Audio
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=S7,DEV=0
    SteelSeries Arctis 7, USB Audio
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=S7,DEV=0
    SteelSeries Arctis 7, USB Audio
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output

When running

pacmd load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:1,1

both sound devices are now shown in sound settings in Gnome. The profile
name for the stereo device is empty, but the stereo device can be selected
and is working fine (also the mono device is still working and can be
adjusted on its separate volume control on the headset, i.e. perfect).

The sound level is too low, though, so it must be turned to max in
alsamixer.


Another thing that I tried was to swap the devices in alsa by setting the
following in /etc
/asound.conf

defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.pcm.device 1

Now the stereo device card is automatically visible in sound settings (with
a proper name). However, if the USB headset is not attached to the
computer, this setting causes that there is no sound at all after booting
the computer.

So in conclusion, has anyone any idea how to pursue this? Ideally, I would
like the headset to just work when attaching it (now I just run a script
with the pacmd row). Is it a pulseaudio problem or is there something that
needs to be adjusted (or patched) in alsa?


--
Johan Heikkilä
<johan.heikkila at gmail.com>
GSM: +358 50 589 33 22
PGP fingerprint: 716B1611DAC9267CE40CF90D6BC286B9F0FA6FD3
PGP signature: https://keybase.io/johanh/pgp_keys.asc
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