Ubuntu – Analog stereo out on speakers and headphones

alsaheadphonespulseaudiosoundspeakers

this sounds like a pretty dumb question but how can I get audio output on headphones and speakers? My motherboard is GA-G41M-Combo and doesn't seem to have any digital audio out, but 3 miniplugs coloured blue, green, and red. I don't want surround, I just want headphones and speakers working at the same time without needing to switch a cable (my headphones have a power on/off toggle). The motherboard looks like this:

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I currently have speakers plugged into green (working) and headphones plugged into blue (no sound), and can't seem to get output on the headphones after fiddling with the sound settings in Ubuntu 12.04. Do I really have to buy a splitter?! The motherboard didn't come with any front panel adapters.

Best Answer

I don't have a system which I can test this out on, but I believe this section from the Arch Linux PulseAudio website should help you:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio/Examples#Splitting_front.2Frear

To sum up what you should do:

  1. Open a terminal and make a back up of /etc/pulse/default.pa like this: cp /etc/pulse/default.pa ~/default.pa.bak
  2. Open the sound settings menu and change "analog output"'s mode to "Analog Surround 4.0 Output"
  3. In the terminal run pacmd list-sinks and copy the outputted sink's name. Mine looks like "name: ", and we're interested in the bit in <>, yours should now end in "analog-surround-40".
  4. Open default.pa as administrator using sudo gedit /etc/pulse/default.pa and add the lines:

    load-module module-remap-sink sink_name=speakers remix=no master=alsa_output.pci-0000_05_00.0.analog-surround-40 channels=2 master_channel_map=front-left,front-right channel_map=front-left,front-right

    load-module module-remap-sink sink_name=headphones remix=no master=alsa_output.pci-0000_05_00.0.analog-surround-40 channels=2 master_channel_map=rear-left,rear-right channel_map=front-left,front-right

Replace "master=alsa_output.pci-0000_05_00.0.analog-surround-40" with the device name you found in step 3.

Now you should be able to select from "Headphones" and "Speakers" in the Sound Settings menu when you want to switch between headphones and speakers.

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