Disable auto-mute when no sound is playing

Like the title says I wish to disable auto-mute when no sound is playing.

I’ve been meaning to ask this for over two years. I’ve looked around but I didn’t find anything related with my issue.

When I’m away from the computer for a bit and not playing any sound, my sound will mute, but the mute icon shows that nothing is muted. To get sound back I have to play music or video and turn the volume up. Then the sound will connect again and work as normal.

I launched alsamixer and saw auto-mute option and disabled it, but nothing changed.
Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

This sounds like a issue with TLP. In case it is installed, please remove it and reboot to see if the issue is gone. In case you’re using a laptop, you may want to reinstall it again for power-saving.

2 Likes

Thanks pux for reply.
Can I just disable the tlp service instead of uninstalling. I like to not remove things until I know that, that is the issue. lol

The tlp service is active at the moment.

Disabling should work if the issue is related to tlp.

The Auto-Mute Mode setting in ALSA is to disable audio to speakers when headphones are plugged in

From your description it sounds like you wish to deactivate a module in PulseAudio module-suspend on-idle that suspends audio playback sinks when no sound is playing

Use this command to add a comment tag ‘#’ to deactivate the load-module command

sudo sed -Ei '/load-module module-suspend-on-idle/s/^/#/' /etc/pulse/default.pa

Then reboot system, or restart Pulseaudio

systemctl --user restart pulseaudio

Ah right that sounds relevant too. I’m going to be away from the pc for a lil bit, so I’ll see if it’s muted when I’m back, depends if I’ve been away for long enough. I’ve disabled the service, so I’ll try your suggestion after and let every one know if it works or not.

I just had a look and it already has “#” before load-module module-suspend-on-idle. So looks like that’s not it. And the disable tlp service didn’t work either.
This auto-mute stuff is really confusing I must say.

What happens on PipeWire? I had similar issues when I used PulseAudio, but PipeWire doesn’t seem to have such issues.

I am not sure what you are confusing with auto-mute to advise the correct terminology

Please post response to this command to show PulseAudio loaded modules and mute/suspend states

pacmd dump

please also post response for this to show status of PulseAudio and Pipewire servers

inxi -Aa

Pipewire does not work unless additional packages to replace PulseAudio are installed but it might be causing problems for PulseAudio

@nikgnomic
Sorry if I got the terminology wrong, I just don’t really know fully what it could be. I just know that the sound “disconnects” when not used.
The output of pacmd dump is:

Configuration dump generated at Mon Aug 2 13:31:11 2021

load-module module-device-restore
load-module module-stream-restore
load-module module-card-restore
load-module module-augment-properties
load-module module-switch-on-port-available
load-module module-udev-detect
load-module module-alsa-card device_id=“0” name=“pci-0000_2d_00.1” card_name=“alsa_card.pci-0000_2d_00.1” namereg_fail=false tsched=yes fixed_latency_range=no ignore_dB=no deferred_volume=yes use_ucm=yes avoid_resampling=no card_properties=“module-udev-detect.discovered=1”
load-module module-alsa-card device_id=“1” name=“pci-0000_2f_00.4” card_name=“alsa_card.pci-0000_2f_00.4” namereg_fail=false tsched=yes fixed_latency_range=no ignore_dB=no deferred_volume=yes use_ucm=yes avoid_resampling=no card_properties=“module-udev-detect.discovered=1”
load-module module-jackdbus-detect channels=2
load-module module-bluetooth-policy
load-module module-bluetooth-discover
load-module module-bluez5-discover
load-module module-dbus-protocol
load-module module-native-protocol-unix
load-module module-gsettings
load-module module-default-device-restore
load-module module-always-sink
load-module module-intended-roles
load-module module-console-kit
load-module module-systemd-login
load-module module-position-event-sounds
load-module module-role-cork
load-module module-filter-heuristics
load-module module-filter-apply
load-module module-x11-publish display=:0.0 xauthority=/home/michael/.Xauthority
load-module module-x11-xsmp display=:0.0 xauthority=/home/michael/.Xauthority session_manager=local/michael-manjaro:@/tmp/.ICE-unix/1516,unix/michael-manjaro:/tmp/.ICE-unix/1516
load-module module-cli-protocol-unix

set-sink-volume alsa_output.pci-0000_2f_00.4.analog-surround-51 0x4cca
set-sink-mute alsa_output.pci-0000_2f_00.4.analog-surround-51 no
suspend-sink alsa_output.pci-0000_2f_00.4.analog-surround-51 no
set-sink-volume alsa_output.pci-0000_2d_00.1.hdmi-stereo-extra1 0x8ac6
set-sink-mute alsa_output.pci-0000_2d_00.1.hdmi-stereo-extra1 no
suspend-sink alsa_output.pci-0000_2d_00.1.hdmi-stereo-extra1 no

set-source-volume alsa_output.pci-0000_2f_00.4.analog-surround-51.monitor 0x10000
set-source-mute alsa_output.pci-0000_2f_00.4.analog-surround-51.monitor no
suspend-source alsa_output.pci-0000_2f_00.4.analog-surround-51.monitor no
set-source-volume alsa_output.pci-0000_2d_00.1.hdmi-stereo-extra1.monitor 0x10000
set-source-mute alsa_output.pci-0000_2d_00.1.hdmi-stereo-extra1.monitor no
suspend-source alsa_output.pci-0000_2d_00.1.hdmi-stereo-extra1.monitor no

set-card-profile alsa_card.pci-0000_2d_00.1 output:hdmi-stereo-extra1
set-card-profile alsa_card.pci-0000_2f_00.4 output:analog-surround-51

set-default-sink alsa_output.pci-0000_2f_00.4.analog-surround-51
set-default-source alsa_output.pci-0000_2f_00.4.analog-surround-51.monitor

EOF

and the output from inxi -Aa is:

Audio: Device-1: NVIDIA GP102 HDMI Audio vendor: Gigabyte driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 2d:00.1
chip-ID: 10de:10ef class-ID: 0403
Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Starship/Matisse HD Audio vendor: Micro-Star MSI driver: snd_hda_intel
v: kernel bus-ID: 2f:00.4 chip-ID: 1022:1487 class-ID: 0403
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.13.5-1-MANJARO running: yes
Sound Server-2: JACK v: 1.9.19 running: no
Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes
Sound Server-4: PipeWire v: 0.3.32 running: no

I use Device-2 for sound output.
Thanks