Ubuntu – Auto-Switch Audio to HDMI When Plugged In

hdmipulseaudiosoundudev

I have a laptop with an HDMI port. While we're homeless and staying with friends I've been plugging it into their surround sound receiver with an HDMI cable. To get sound working I have to open up the sound settings jobby and switch the hardware profile from "Analogue Stereo Output" to "Digital Stereo (HDMI) Output" to have sound coming from the surround sound instead of the laptop's mincey speakers.

I have to do the reverse when I unplug it to get sound coming out of the speakers.

I'm getting a little bored of doing this. I'd like to script this. I have seen this question and its answer but pacmd list-sinks only shows one sink when the sound profile drop down shows several options.

And is there a udev event I could hook this into so it can run the script whenever the HDMI status changes?

Best Answer

In Ubuntu 11.10 pulseaudio will recognize when you plug hdmi (or phone jack) and will make the switch automatically.

See this:

http://voices.canonical.com/david.henningsson/?p=15

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Default playback audio output on Xubuntu 13.10

I had the same problem. I'm not an expert but this is what worked for me.

For what I've understood the problem is that pulse is loading by default the hdmi profile of the sound card. That means that even if you set the default sink as alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo when pulse try to use that sink it can't find it.

The solution I've found is to manually configure pulse to make it load the desired profile when it starts. To achieve this you have to edit /etc/pulse/default.pa and at the end of the file add this three lines

set-card-profile alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1b.0 output:analog-stereo
set-default-sink alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo
set-default-source alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.monitor

the first line set the desired card profile. In my case was output:analog-stereo, you can have a complete list of profile running :

pactl list cards

the second and third line sets the default output and input respectively.

Another thing you can do is add a configuration for alsa to use pulse. Look in your home directory for the .asoundrc file, if the file does not exists create it and write this inside:

pcm.pulse {
     type pulse
}
ctl.pulse {
     type pulse
}
pcm.!default {
     type pulse
}
ctl.!default {
     type pulse
}

then reboot.

Now you should have the audio coming from your pc speaker by default.

Hope this help.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Default playback audio output on Xubuntu 13.10

Related Question