[pulseaudio-discuss] USB headset Steelseries Arctis troubleshooting

[Johan Heikkilä]

2017-08-20 11:14 GMT+03:00 Tanu Kaskinen <tanuk at iki.fi>:
>
> Ok, so there are two volume and mute elements for playback and one
> volume and mute element for capture. The playback elements have the
> same name, "PCM", and they are distinguished by their index (0 and 1).
> PulseAudio doesn't currently support multiple elements with the same
> name, so only the PCM with index 0 will be used by PulseAudio. Which
> one is it, mono or stereo? Probably mono, since hw:1,0 is mono and
> hw:1,1 is stereo.

Correct.

>
> By the way, what's the exact model of the headset? And what's the udev
> configuration line that you're using? It seems that there are two USB
> headsets, "Arctis 5" and "Arctis 7". I'll assume Arctis 5 in the file
> naming below. Not that this matters at this point, but when I submit a
> patch, I need to know the exact model.
>

This is the Arctis 7 with a  wireless connection. I understood that
Arctis 5 is exactly the same headset, but without wireless and only
USB connection. I don't know the device id for the Arctis 5, though.
Here is my udev row for Arctis 7:

ATTRS{idVendor}=="1038", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1260",
ENV{PULSE_PROFILE_SET}="steelseries-arctis-usb-audio.conf"

> Create file
> /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/steelseries-arctis-5-output-mono.conf
> with the following contents:
>
> [Element PCM]
> volume = merge
> switch = mute
> override-map.1 = all
> override-map.2 = all-left,all-right
>
> Create file
> /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/steelseries-arctis-5-input.conf
> with the following contents:
>
> [Element Headset]
> volume = merge
> switch = mute
> override-map.1 = all
> override-map.2 = all-left,all-right
>
> Then use
>
>     paths-output = steelseries-arctis-5-output-mono
>
> in the mono output mapping and
>
>     paths-input = steelseries-arctis-5-input
>
> in the input mapping.
>
> Does this make the gnome UI work better?

On the input side yes. Now there is only one mic (no extra profiles to
select). But the ouput side is now confused. Now there is only a
mono-output visible, and I have to manually select "Analog stereo
headset output + Headset microphone input" from pavucontrol
configuration to make the stereo device visible in Gnome sound
settings. But that doesn't help. There are now two separate output
devices visible (mono and stereo) in Gnome sound settings and when
trying to select any of their profiles, the  devices just disappear.
So it doesn't work at all on the output side.

Now when I turn off auto-profile and try to use the manual profiles I
used earlier, no Steelseries device is visible at all in pavucontrol.
There is a conflict between the paths-output/input and manual
profiles.

So I tried with auto-profiles again, but I removed the paths-output
directive. But now there is no Steelseries output device visible in
Gnome sound settings (input device still visible), even though the
profiles are visible in pavucontrol. Not until I remove also
paths-input (strange, because that is for the input device), the
output device becomes visible in sound settings. But now we are back
to the problem with input device visible in output and vice versa.

One more thing that I tried was to set also "paths-output =
steelseries-arctis-stereo" and create a copy of the mono paths file.
Now there are two output devices in Gnome sound settings with one
profile each, but the profiles are swapped, and the mono device
doesn't seem to work.

So far the only usable way is to list no paths in the mappings and use
auto-profile, with the side effect mentioned, that profiles are shown
in both output and input in gnome sound settings.

--
Johan Heikkilä
<johan.heikkila at gmail.com>
GSM: +358 50 589 33 22
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