I’ve just attempted to install pipewire instead of pulseaudio (to get access to multi-band compression, mostly), and I’ve managed to get myself into a bit of a pickle. I have no sound out of my HDMI port, despite everything appearing correct - the HDMI device exists, I can select it from KDE’s settings menu, and aplay -l lists it as I expect; it just… doesn’t get any sound out of it.
The HDMI port goes to a TV, which is then plugged into standalone speakers; I use it to run a smart TV off the same machine as my regular computer (just playing browser videos, mostly). I remember having the same issue when I first plugged in the TV; I’m trying to remember how I solved it, but if I remember correctly I just kind of poked things until the problem magically went away. I just don’t remember what I poked!
So I’ve got two options - fix the HDMI issue, or revert to pulseaudio. I attempted to revert, but ended up thoroughly wrecking my setup such that browser videos simply refused to play at all (even silently); I’m on pipewire again because that at least mostly works. I’d definitely prefer to get pipewire working, but more than anything I just want to be able to use my TV speakers again! (And now that I’m thinking about it, I sort of suspect that if I reverted, I’d have the same problem regardless.)
The output of aplay -l is this: (sorry it’s in Japanese; apparently that’s the system language it decided to use for this)
**** ハードウェアデバイス PLAYBACK のリスト ****
カード 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], デバイス 3: HDMI 0 [SM32UNP]
サブデバイス: 1/1
サブデバイス #0: subdevice #0
カード 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], デバイス 7: HDMI 1 [Beyond TV]
サブデバイス: 1/1
サブデバイス #0: subdevice #0
カード 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], デバイス 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
サブデバイス: 1/1
サブデバイス #0: subdevice #0
カード 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], デバイス 9: HDMI 3 [HDMI 3]
サブデバイス: 1/1
サブデバイス #0: subdevice #0
カード 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], デバイス 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog]
サブデバイス: 1/1
サブデバイス #0: subdevice #0
カード 2: Microphones [Blue Microphones], デバイス 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
サブデバイス: 1/1
サブデバイス #0: subdevice #0
I can get output out of the ‘HD-Audio Generic’ one just fine (my desk speakers), and I don’t care in the least about getting audio through my mic’s output or the monitor (the SM32UNP). speaker-test -D hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1 -c 2 (addressing the Beyond TV device directly) works just fine; I correctly get white noise out of the TV speakers. I just get no such noise when I run speaker-test with no arguments (or if I play sound from any other source) when I select the TV output via KDE’s audio settings GUI.
Here’s my alsa-info.sh; checking the pipewire service status shows no errors.