[pulseaudio-discuss] USB headset Steelseries Arctis troubleshooting

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Sun, 2017-08-20 at 13:57 +0300, Johan Heikkilä wrote:
> 2017-08-20 11:14 GMT+03:00 Tanu Kaskinen <tanuk at iki.fi>:
> > 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.

That sounds strange. There shouldn't be any such limitation that you
can't use paths-output with manual profiles. What if you don't use
"skip-probe = yes" in the manual profiles, does that make any
difference?

> 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.

It seems that if there's at least one path defined for the card, the
Gnome sound settings will ignore any profiles that don't have paths
associated with them.

Instead of copying steelseries-arctis-mono.conf to steelseries-arctis-
stereo.conf, make steelseries-arctis-stereo.conf an empty file. If you
copy the file, both paths will try to control the same PCM element,
which is not good.

Since both outputs should be usable simultaneously, disable auto-
profiles and try this profile definition:

[Profile output:analog-mono+output:analog-stereo+input:analog-input-headset-mic]
description = Mono output + Stereo output + Mono input
output-mappings = analog-mono analog-stereo
input-mappings = analog-input-headset-mic
priority = 100
skip-probe = yes   # you can try with and without this option

-- 
Tanu

https://www.patreon.com/tanuk