[pulseaudio-discuss] USB headset Steelseries Arctis troubleshooting

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Sat, 2017-08-26 at 21:09 +0300, Johan Heikkilä wrote:
> 2017-08-26 16:12 GMT+03:00 Tanu Kaskinen <tanuk at iki.fi>:
> > 
> > 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.
> > 
> 
> Great! Creating an empty steelseries-arctis-stereo.conf did the trick!
> Now there is a stereo and a mono output device with one profile each.
> And they work in Gnome sound settings.
> 
> There is a small cosmetic issue. The devices in Gnome sound settings
> are now named "steelseries-arctis-output-mono - SteelSeries Arctis 7",
> "steelseries-arctis-output-stereo - SteelSeries Arctis 7" and
> "steelseries-arctis-input - SteelSeries Arctis 7". The device names
> obviously comes from  "<paths name> - <device name>". Is there a way
> to set these?

In the path configuration file:

[General]
description-key = analog-input-microphone-headset

That will set the description to "Headset Microphone", and it will be
translated.

[General]
description = Headset Mono Output

That will set the description to "Headset Mono Output". The string
won't be translated. To make it translatable, a new description key
needs to be added to src/modules/alsa/alsa-mixer.c, in the
well_known_descriptions table.

> Then there is the question of sound levels. Is there a way to increase
> the default levels or is it left to the user to adjust in alsamixer?

For the mono output PulseAudio supports the full hardware volume scale,
because the path configuration contains the necessary information to
control the hardware volume.

For the stereo output PulseAudio's maximum volume will be whatever
happens to be set in alsamixer, because PulseAudio won't control the
hardware volume.

> For reference, here are the changes so far:
> https://johanh.net/steelseries_arctis.patch

I see you're using auto-profiles. That will prevent simultaneous use of
the mono and stereo outputs. Did you try the manual profile that I
suggested in my previous mail?

-- 
Tanu

https://www.patreon.com/tanuk