16.04headphonespulseaudiosoundspeakers
Hello I am running Xubuntu 16.04 (kernal is 4.13.0-32-generic) on an Asus laptop, after unplugging headphones the speakers are not working. I have searched a lot of old posts and found no explanation.
Looking at Sound Settings, on the output devices tab, headphones are marked as plugged in, when they are not, and speakers marked as unavailable.
I would be grateful for any help and suggestions with this problem.
Thanks in advance,
PC.
Firstly, keep options snd-hda-intel model=asus-mode5 added to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
Disable pulseaudio's auto spawning capabilities and kill all instances
$ echo autospawn = no >> /etc/pulse/client.conf
$ killall pulseaudio
check if there is anything else using the sound card
$ sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*
make sure you kill anything that comes up and stop it from respawning too, how to do this will depend on what the program is.
Install alsa-tools-gui
$ sudo apt-get install alsa-tools-gui
$ sudo hdajackretask
When the GUI loads, click "Show unconnected pins" and override the first unconnected pin to be a headphone jack and apply the settings. Daemonise pulseaudio puslseaudio -D and test the sound, repeat this for all unconnected ports until you find the right one.
Once you have found the one the correct jack, click "Install boot override" and restart to make sure everything works. Now edit the pulseaudio config file and remove the line added earlier to allow respawning again.
Until you reboot, volume can only modified using alsamixer rather than the usual GUI component. After rebooting, everything goes back to normal.
Both my speakers and my headphones were playing sound at the same time and I just fixed that issue using the answers by WinEunuuchs2Unix and notorious.dds. You may want to read those posts for more complete info.
The below instruction will separate Line Out and Headphones (mine is actually a headset with mic) in the Ubuntu 18.04 Sound Settings (Volume Settings). You can swap the output device using by clicking on it in Sound Settings and individually set the volume for each.
Note that this fix may be overridden by pulseaudio software updates, in which case you may have to repeat the process below.
Determine your ALSA output file
Disconnect your headphones and select your speakers as the output in Sound Settings.
Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and type pactl list | grep 'Active Port.*output.*'. Note the active port. Mine was analog-output-lineout so I will use analog-output-lineout.conf as my ALSA speaker output file in the below instructions.
Connect your headphones and select them as the output in Sound Settings.
Type pactl list | grep 'Active Port.*output.*' again and note the active port. Mine was analog-output-headphones so I will use analog-output-headphones.conf as my ALSA microphone output file the below instructions.
Edit ALSA output file for the speakers
Change to ALSA mixer path files directory by typing cd /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/
Backup the speaker output file by typing sudo cp ./analog-output-lineout.conf analog-output-lineout.conf.bak
Edit that file by typing gedit admin:///usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output-lineout.conf
Find the [Jack Headphone] or [Jack Front Headphone] line, depending on where your headphone jack is located and it should look something like this:
[Jack Headphone]
state.plugged = no
state.unplugged = unknown
Change state.plugged = no to state.plugged = yes to tell pulseaudio that headphones are always plugged in.
Add this to code to the end of the file (but before any .include lines) to create a volume slider for the speakers. Then save and close the editor afterwards.
[Element Line Out]
switch = mute
volume = merge
Edit ALSA output file for the headphones
Backup the Headphone output file by typing sudo cp ./analog-output-headphones.conf analog-output-headphones.conf.bak
Edit that file by typing gedit admin:///usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output-headphones.conf
Add this to code to the end of the file (but before any .include lines) to mute the speakers when headphones are selected. Then save and close the editor afterwards.
[Element Line Out]
switch = off
volume = off
Skip this step on the first try and complete the steps below. If the speaker sound does not turn off when the headphones are selected, it may be because the sound is being redirected through the Front element. Find the [Element Front] line and modify it as this:
[Element Front]
switch = off
volume = off
Edit Auto-Mute is disabled in alsamixer
alsamixerAuto-Mute and disabled ysing the down-arrowalsactl storeRestart Pulseaudit
pulseaudio -k && pulseaudio --startYou should now see separate options for speakers and headphones in sound settings.
Best Answer
For anyone else having these sorts of audio issues, I fixed my problem as follows:
It turns out a lot of these issues are caused by false data being passed from the BIOS to ALSA, e.g. in my case the BIOS was communicating to ALSA that headphones were plugged in, when they were not. This miscommunication needs to be overridden.
Firstly install ALSA tools gui:
sudo apt install alsa-tools-gui
A number of links will appear in the multimedia tab of your menu. Select the link named HDAJackRetask, when the gui opens select the appropriate codec and override the erroneous BIOS messages with what you require. See attached image.