[pulseaudio-discuss] USB-connected headsets: no sound

[Sean Greenslade]

On Wed, Feb 03, 2021 at 07:25:31AM -0800, Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Feb 2021, Sean Greenslade wrote:
> 
> > By default, new sound devices don't take over existing streams. In
> > pavucontrol under the playback tab, there should be a dropdown menu for
> > each client listing which card it is currently sending audio to. Try
> > starting a sound playback and switching its dropdown to the USB device.
> 
> Sean,
> 
> Thanks for the quick response.
> 
> I started a .mp3 using Audacious and pavucontrol's Playback tab shows
> Applications (see attached screenshot.)

The menu I was referring to is attached to each of the clients. In your
screenshot, it's the box that says "HD-Audio Generic Analog Stereo".
Click that and change it to "Logitech H570e Stereo Analog Stereo".

> > Under the "output devices" tab, there is a checkmark button next to the
> > sound devices. This lets you specify which device is the default. It won't
> > force existing streams over to it, however, and it won't prevent some
> > clients from remembering their previous soundcard, so you may still need
> > to manually move some clients over to the new soundcard.
> 
> There are two devices shown, including the headphones. The checkmark box has
> 2 states represented by light grey and lighter grey (see attached
> screenshot). Both tooltips say the active checkmark is to 'Set for
> fallback.' By trial-and-error I think the darker grey is the active state
> (it is for the mute button.) Regardless, no sound is heard with any
> combination of checkmark button states for the two output devices.

Your system theme makes it a little hard to tell, but yes, the one that
is in the darkened state is the selected one. As I mentioned, this won't
directly affect existing streams, it simply sets the "fallback" device
that is selected if a new client appears and doesn't explicitly specify
which sound card it wants to send audio to.

--Sean