How to set the output port on the audio card

alsaaudiopulseaudio

My audio card has two ports; for clarity I'll call them the 'speaker' and 'headphone' port. In Windows, the audio control sees two separate ports, and I can switch back and forth between speaker and headphone at will.

In Linux, the audio will always come out the speaker port by default, and automatically switch to the headphone port if I plug headphones in.

How do I control this behaviour? I've tried using pacmd's "sink-set-port", and the "list-sinks" output suggests that the 'active port' has changed, but nothing actually happens.

Data from list-sinks:

properties:
    alsa.resolution_bits = "16"
    device.api = "alsa"
    device.class = "sound"
    alsa.class = "generic"
    alsa.subclass = "generic-mix"
    alsa.name = "ALC889 Analog"
    alsa.id = "ALC889 Analog"
    alsa.subdevice = "0"
    alsa.subdevice_name = "subdevice #0"
    alsa.device = "0"
    alsa.card = "0"
    alsa.card_name = "HDA Intel PCH"
    alsa.long_card_name = "HDA Intel PCH at 0xfbff8000 irq 60"
    alsa.driver_name = "snd_hda_intel"
    device.bus_path = "pci-0000:00:1b.0"
    sysfs.path = "/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0"
    device.bus = "pci"
    device.vendor.id = "8086"
    device.vendor.name = "Intel Corporation"
    device.product.id = "1c20"
    device.product.name = "6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller"
    device.form_factor = "internal"
    device.string = "front:0"
    device.buffering.buffer_size = "65536"
    device.buffering.fragment_size = "32768"
    device.access_mode = "mmap+timer"
    device.profile.name = "analog-stereo"
    device.profile.description = "Analog Stereo"
    device.description = "Built-in Audio Analog Stereo"
    alsa.mixer_name = "Realtek ALC889"
    alsa.components = "HDA:10ec0889,1458a022,00100004"
    module-udev-detect.discovered = "1"
    device.icon_name = "audio-card-pci"
ports:
    analog-output: Analog Output (priority 9900, latency offset 0 usec, available: unknown)
        properties:
            
    analog-output-headphones: Headphones (priority 9000, latency offset 0 usec, available: yes)
        properties:
            device.icon_name = "audio-headphones"
active port: <analog-output>

Best Answer

Turns out ALSA will automatically mute my main speakers when something plugs in the headphone jack. I can disable that by disabling auto-mute mode in alsamixer. I can then control the levels of the headphone port and speaker port independently.

Related Solutions

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

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.

Linux Audio – Troubleshooting ALSA, PulseAudio, and Intel HDA PCH

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

Related Solutions

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

Linux Audio – Troubleshooting ALSA, PulseAudio, and Intel HDA PCH

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