Debian – How to enable both built-in audio output and HDMI audio output with PulseAudio

audiodebianhdmipulseaudio

I've been searching for this issue for days now and tried various solutions suggested, without any success.

Basically, I have a laptop with built-in audio (the output goes either to the headphone jack or to the built-in speaker) and HDMI. I'm running Debian 7.5 with KDE.

Previously, I was running ALSA only and I was able to configure Skype to ring on the HDMI, but use the headphones for the calls themselves. I'd like to achieve something similar using Pulse.

I'm not sure if Skype still separates ringing and call audio when it sends them to PulseAudio, but as the Linux version of Skype can run arbitrary scripts on events, I would be happy if I could use e.g. aplay to play something on the HDMI port. However, whatever I do, I always see (and can use) a single output device only.

aplay -l:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC269VB Analog [ALC269VB Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

aplay -L:

default
    Playback/recording through the PulseAudio sound server
sysdefault:CARD=PCH
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC269VB Analog
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC269VB Analog
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC269VB Analog
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC269VB Analog
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC269VB Analog
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC269VB Analog
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC269VB Analog
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
hdmi:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0
    HDMI Audio Output

When I try to use the hdmi device directly, I get the following error:

$ aplay -D hdmi alert.wav
Playing WAVE 'alert.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 22050 Hz, Mono
aplay: set_params:1087: Channels count non available

In pavucontrol, under the Configuration tab, I see a Profile drop-down with the following options:

Analog Stereo Duplex
Analog Stereo Output
Analog Stereo (HDMI) Output + Analog Stereo Input
Analog Stereo (HDMI) Output
Analog Stereo Input
Off

As far as I can tell, all of these work as (probably) expected: the ones that say HDMI will direct audio output to the HDMI port; the others to the built-in audio card. No matter which one I select, I always see a single output device only under the Output Devices tab.

I've tried adding either the built-in or the HDMI device to /etc/pulse/default.pa using load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,0 and load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,3 – these either seemed to have no effect, or made pulseaudio not display any profiles at all.

Best Answer

I just managed to configure exactly this thanks to the instructions in the ArchLinux wiki :

Set the one sink - HDMI - in pavucontrol/Configuration, and the other - analog output - you specify in default.pa :

load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,0
load-module module-combine-sink sink_name=combined
set-default-sink combined

Maybe you were missing the last two lines?

Addendum: This is OK to add the analog output to HDMI, but what if you want it the other way around? (I want to keep analog input, Pulse calls that "duplex"...) Unfortunately, load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,3 did not work to add HDMI output to Pulse's "Analog Stereo Duplex" configuration. Pulse would start, but no HDMI output.

I compared the output of pacmd list-sinks in the two situations. When I added device=hw:0,3, that one would show up without ports. When HDMI output was chosen in pavucontrol, there would be ports. Looking at the output details, I came up with device=hdmi:0.

Choose "Analog Stereo Duplex" as your pavucontrol configuration, and add to default.pa :

load-module module-alsa-sink device=hdmi:0
load-module module-combine-sink sink_name=combined
set-default-sink combined

Works like a charm. I keep my microphone input, and on pavucontrol/Output Devices I have all options for analog output and for HDMI.

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Linux – No HDMI Audio Output – APLAY does not detect NVIDIA GPU

Possibly relevant:

For some reason, a lot of recent laptops are set up to boot with the GPU's PCI audio function disabled. I haven't done much investigation, but you can turn on the audio function and make the kernel see it by setting the appropriate PCI configuration bit and then telling the kernel to rescan the PCI bus on the PCI bridge the GPU is connected to.

Unfortunately, the kernel won't see the audio function unless you remove the graphics function first, which temporarily breaks the console. Because of that, it works best if you write a script to do it so you don't have to SSH into the system or try to type the commands into the console blind. Obviously, you have to stop the X server first so that you can unload the NVIDIA drivers.

For example, on my system, the GPU is at 01:00.0 and its parent PCI bridge is 00:01.0. So the script I use is:

setpci -s 01:00.0 0x488.l=0x2000000:0x2000000
rmmod nvidia-drm nvidia-modeset nvidia
echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/remove
echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:00:01.0/rescan
modprobe nvidia-drm
xinit -- -retro

You can figure out your PCI topology with "lspci -t" but interpreting the results is pretty tricky.

Aaron Plattner
NVIDIA Linux Graphics

Linux – ALSA, PulseAudio and Intel HDA PCH with no sound

Good news! A very smart Arch user by the name of ronincoder discovered a fix for the headphone jack. I worked with ronincoder to make a kernel patch [1] and our patch made it into the 5.7 kernel release! It was also applied to the 5.4 LTS kernel. I booted both 5.7.2 and 5.4.46 and the headphone jack audio is loud and clear. :)

Does it work for you? It should if you have a Samsung Notebook 9 Pro NP930SBE-K01US or NP930MBE-K04US (ronincoder's is the former, mine is the latter). You can check your laptop model by running alsa_info.sh and looking at "Board Name". The Realtek ALC298 codec in the NP930SBE-K01US and NP930MBE-K04US identifies itself with "Subsystem Id" 0x144dc169 and 0x144dc176, respectively. If snd_hda_intel sees either of these ids it implements the fix.

What about the speakers? I reported the no-sound-on-internal-speakers issue on the kernel bugzilla [2]. Linux sound maintainer Jaroslav Kysela speculates that there may be some amplifiers connected to the HDA codec which are not initialized by the BIOS, and are thus not active in Linux. He suggests dumping the codec communication for the Windows driver using QEMU. We could then parse the dump and replay the communication in Linux using Early Patching [3] or writing another kernel patch. It's been a month since Jaroslav made this suggestion and I've made some progress but I still don't have a good dump. Please join the discussion on the kernel bugzilla if you'd like to help me. ^^

[1] For reference, our patch made it into Linus' tree as commit 14425f1f521f (ALSA: hda/realtek: Add quirk for Samsung Notebook). [2] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=207423 [3] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.17/sound/hd-audio/notes.html#early-patching

Best Answer

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