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

[Sean Greenslade]

On Fri, Feb 05, 2021 at 08:20:00AM -0800, Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Feb 2021, Sean Greenslade wrote:
> 
> > There are two places in pavucontrol where you will need to verify
> > things.

Did you try the things I recommended in my previous email? What were the
results?

By the way, I noticed in the pactl output you provided that you have the
stereo volumes unlocked, and that the left channel is set to 8% while
the right channel is set to 100%. If that was not intentional, you
should go into pavucontrol, go to the "Output Devices" tab, set both
volume sliders to 100%, and click the padlock symbol ("Lock channels
together").

> I did a lot of poking in the system. Here's the relevant lines in dmesg:
> # dmesg
> [4721657.287134] usb 1-11: new full-speed USB device number 49 using xhci_hcd
> [4721657.877083] usb 1-11: New USB device found, idVendor=046d, idProduct=0a56, bcdDevice= 1.03
> [4721657.877086] usb 1-11: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
> [4721657.877088] usb 1-11: Product: Logitech H570e Stereo
> [4721657.877089] usb 1-11: Manufacturer: Logitech Inc
> [4721657.877091] usb 1-11: SerialNumber: 00000000
> [4721658.041812] usb 1-11: Warning! Unlikely big volume range (=4125), cval->res is probably
> wrong.
> [4721658.041816] usb 1-11: [11] FU [Sidetone Playback Volume] ch = 1, val = 0/4125/1
> [4721658.180916] input: Logitech Inc Logitech H570e Stereo Consumer Control as
> /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.3/0000:01:00.0/usb1/1-11/1-11:1.3/0003:046D:0A56.0014/input/input
> 53
> [4721658.233326] input: Logitech Inc Logitech H570e Stereo as
> /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.3/0000:01:00.0/usb1/1-11/1-11:1.3/0003:046D:0A56.0014/input/input
> 54
> [4721658.233482] hid-generic 0003:046D:0A56.0014: input,hiddev96,hidraw1: USB HID v1.11 Device
> [Logitech Inc Logitech H570e Stereo] on usb-0000:01:00.0-11/input3

This warning is probably irrelevant to your issue. Note that it refers
to the "Sidetone Playback Volume", which is a feature of some headsets
where some of the microphone's signal is played back through the
headphones to help you modulate your speech better. That likely won't
have any effect on normal audio playback.

> When I entered the Warning! in duckduckgo I found a 7-year-old thread on a
> red hat forum. There I learned about the 'pactl list' command. Running that
> here poured out a lot of output. The sections on the Logitech headset are in
> the attached gzipped text file.
> 
> I don't understand why but I see what's probably the underlying cause. I
> hope that your expertise can translate it to explain what I need to do about
> the suspended and other non-working parts.

The sound cards are all suspended because there are no active programs
playing sound, called "sink inputs" in pulseaudio parlance. Try starting
up an audio player and running "pactl list sink-inputs". You should see
the details of the application, as well as the sink number that it is
feeding its audio to. "pactl list sinks" will show the sound cards and
their states. Once something is feeding audio to a card, its state
should automatically transition to RUNNING.

--Sean