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I have Unbuntu 18.04 on Dell laptop with Pulse Audio & Gnome desktop. I have my laptop connected to a USB 3.0 dock (not USB-C) with both external speakers and a USB headset plugged into that dock. Upon waking from suspend, I find:

  1. Pulse audio server, via pactl, says the default sink is the speakers on the dock, the way I had it prior to suspend.
  2. The desktop GUI for Sound says the headphones are the default sink.
  3. When I resume playing streaming music from Amazon in the Firefox browser, it goes to the dock speakers.
  4. When I play a video with sound in the Slack desktop client it goes to the headset.
  5. When I re-select the dock speakers in the Sound GUI, then the Slack video play goes to the dock speakers.

So, every time I resume from suspend, I have to go into the Desktop Sound GUI and select the dock speakers. Fast and easy, sure, but I like my computer to work for me, not me for it.

So, any idea on the source of the discrepancy? I imagine there might be a tweak of the suspend/resume configuration that could help things. I also imagine there is a solution to the discrepancy on the default sink. Any ideas?

Here is a snapshot of the Sound GUI to which I am referring:

enter image description here

Kevin Buchs
  • 195

3 Answers3

1

I did discover a mistake in my understanding of the default sink for Pulse audio. I neglected to look at the output of pactl info. Instead, I was looking at the output from pactl list. There I had indentfied the State and mistook that as indicating default when it said Running.

pactl list|grep -A 3 ^Sink

Sink #56 State: SUSPENDED Name: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo Description: Built-in Audio Analog Stereo

Sink #62 State: RUNNING Name: alsa_output.usb-DisplayLink_Dell_D3100_USB3.0_Dock_1801300021-02.iec958-stereo Description: Dell D3100 USB3.0 Dock Digital Stereo (IEC958)

Sink #63 State: SUSPENDED Name: alsa_output.usb-Jabra_Jabra_UC_VOICE_550a_000100A9FCFE-00.analog-stereo Description: Jabra UC VOICE 550a Analog Stereo

So, it turned out that the Sink #63 was actually the default, which is exactly what the Gnome Settings Sound GUI was indicating. Resetting the default via pactl set-default-sink alsa_output.usb-DisplayLink_Dell_D3100_US... changed the indicator in the GUI also.

So, I think my remaining task is to see if I can adjust the resume from suspend procedure to set the default, in the case where I am connected to the dock. Probably, also I want to have the dock connection event to trigger the default setting too.

Kevin Buchs
  • 195
1

You can try to create udev rule https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Backends/ALSA/Profiles/#udevrule

or create systemd service like this https://wiki.parabola.nu/PulseAudio/Troubleshooting#No_sound_after_resume_from_suspend

to handle suspend

ExploitFate
  • 801
0

I had the some issue. Fixed by adding default output sink to ~/.profile

echo "pactl set-default-sink 'alsa_output.pci-0000_0c_00.4.analog-stereo'" |tee -a ~/.profile

Find you default sink with

pactl list sinks |grep Name |grep output | cut -d: -f2

You use USB, so USB-persist might be helpful

ExploitFate
  • 801