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

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Mon, 2017-10-09 at 18:45 +0200, Guenter Milde wrote:
> Dear Tanu,
> 
> thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, it bounced so please excuse my late
> reply.
> 
> On Sat Aug 5 Tanu Kaskinen tanuk at iki.fi wrote:
> > On Fri, 2017-08-04 at 14:50 +0200, Guenter Milde wrote:
> > > Diagnosis:
> > >   headphones work
> > >   speaker: no sound despite signal shown in pavucontrol
> 
> In the meantime, I found a simple patch, posted it to Debian and was told to
> post it here, too:
> 
> There is already a provision for similar problems with other netbooks
> using the "force-speaker.conf" profile set. This can be activated via
> udev rules for the affected netbooks.
> 
> 
> --- /lib/udev/rules.d/90-pulseaudio.rules	2017-06-18 18:03:31.000000000 +0200
> +++ /tmp/90-pulseaudio.rules	2017-10-09 12:28:39.949543375 +0200
> @@ -24,6 +24,7 @@
> 
>  # Force enable speaker and internal mic for some laptops
>  # This should only be necessary for kernels 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5 (as they are lacking the phantom jack kctls).
> +# For the Asus EeePCs also with newer kernels (tested with 4.9).
>  # Acer AOA150
>  ATTRS{subsystem_vendor}=="0x1025", ATTRS{subsystem_device}=="0x015b", ENV{PULSE_PROFILE_SET}="force-speaker-and-int-mic.conf"
>  # Acer Aspire 4810TZ
> @@ -68,6 +69,10 @@
>  ATTRS{subsystem_vendor}=="0x1028", ATTRS{subsystem_device}=="0x0579", ENV{PULSE_PROFILE_SET}="force-speaker-and-int-mic.conf"
>  # Asus 904HA (1000H)
>  ATTRS{subsystem_vendor}=="0x1043", ATTRS{subsystem_device}=="0x831a", ENV{PULSE_PROFILE_SET}="force-speaker-and-int-mic.conf"
> +# Asus EeePC R11CX
> +ATTRS{subsystem_vendor}=="0x1043", ATTRS{subsystem_device}=="0x8516", ENV{PULSE_PROFILE_SET}="force-speaker.conf"
> +# Asus EeePC R011PX
> +ATTRS{subsystem_vendor}=="0x1043", ATTRS{subsystem_device}=="0x8437", ENV{PULSE_PROFILE_SET}="force-speaker.conf"
>  # Asus T101MT
>  ATTRS{subsystem_vendor}=="0x1043", ATTRS{subsystem_device}=="0x83ce", ENV{PULSE_PROFILE_SET}="force-speaker-and-int-mic.conf"
>  # Sony Vaio VGN-SR21M
> 
> 
> With this patch, the Asus EeePC R11CX and R011PX work as expected

Thanks, I applied the patch.

> > > Why are switch and volume set to "off" in the original
> > > analog-output-speaker.conf?
> > 
> > The headphone output is turned off, because playing simultaneously to
> > the speakers and the headphones is a bad idea.
> 
> I understand this, my question would be more precisely:
> 
> What is the difference between "switch = off" and "switch = mute"?
> 
> Could pulseaudio use "switch = mute" in the path file
> pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output-speaker.conf
> so that there is no need for udev rules using the alternative
> profile set "force-speaker.conf"?

Now I realize that I should have read your whole email and think first
before applying your patch... I had already forgot what this thread was
originally about. I now reverted the commit.

"switch = off" means that PulseAudio sets the switch to off. "switch =
mute" means that the switch state follows the sink mute state. If you
set the Headphone element switch to "mute" in the speaker path, then
headphones will be unmuted when the sink is unmuted while having the
speaker port active.

analog-output-speaker used to have "switch = mute" for Headphone, but
that was changed in this commit:
https://cgit.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/commit/?id=22aac4e9fdb3786178f7815a0cb2150f588b1582

analog-output-speaker-always should have been changed at the same time,
but that was forgotten.

As I said in my previous mail, this is an alsa bug. Please report the
issue to the alsa developers:
https://alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Bug_Tracking

If your bug report gets ignored, then we can add a workaround in
PulseAudio, but instead of depending on a bug in the analog-output-
speaker-always configuration, a new path configuration file will be
needed for intentionally leaving headphones unmuted when using
speakers.

-- 
Tanu

https://www.patreon.com/tanuk