Audio issues with HDTV as monitor / speakers

Support Sound
,
1

Fairly fresh install of Manjaro (Just migrated from Zorin)

I have a 3 monitor setup, 2 normal monitors and the third is a TV that I use for watching movies and general audio. It completely powers itself down after 15 minutes of no signal so I have to manually power it on when I want to use it. This has always worked for me since I usually only use my 2 main monitors and only sometimes want audio

With the Manjaro install I’m having to manually change the sound settings (almost) every time I power on the tv. It defaults to digital output (presumably on the mobo) and I have to set it to HDMI 3 to get audio. I’d like to not have to change the setting

Often times the HDMI settings disappear and I have to restart

Is there a way to lock the settings in place even if the system believes a device has been removed? I think thats whats going on here. It no longer sees the tv and tries to autocorrect. How can I prevent this? My assessment could also be wrong so help in diagnosing the actual issue would be appreciated too

Thanks

2

Welcome to Manjaro forum

Assuming that system is using PulseAudio and not replaced with PipeWire, there is a simple way to lock an audio card Profile to a specific output, but it isn’t accessible via KDE controls

For KDE Install QT version of PulseAudio Volume Control

pamac install pavucontrol-qt

Go to Configuration tab to view card Profiles
set the Profile to HDMI 3
and click the padlock icon to lock the Profile
That should keep the card profile locked, but it might not be effective if the card disappears

PulseAudio has a suspend-on-idle module to suspend audio playback after a predetermined amount of idle time (8 seconds)
The simplest way to prevent suspending of playback sinks is to keep pavucontrol open on desktop
The monitor might not power down if the audio device remains active in PulseAudio
but it may require a video signal to remain active

3