HDMI Audio working weird

Hi, I’m new to the Linux world and have been using Manjaro now for a couple of weeks.

My problem is that when I’m connecting my Laptop with my TV over HDMI, the sound is not playing always. Not always because I found out that it will work if I play the test sound Front_Left.wav first and then start a mp3 or a video while the test sound is playing. If I just start a mp3 or some videos it won’t play sound.
The same goes for Youtube videos in Brave Browser, it won’t play sound if I haven’t initiated the play test sound. On the other hand Firefox plays Youtube videos without any problems. I can make Brave Browser play Youtube videos with sound if I have another video playing in Firefox.
It’s like Brave Browser and VLC Player (or any other application for playing mp3) need a previous start sound active to play the video or mp3 sound.

With the build in speakers there is no problem, it only occurs when I have HDMI connected and want to play audio via HDMI.

I think it should be something with PulseAudio but I’m unable to find a solution to get it working without this trick with playing something first.
I also found out that the same case occur with other distros, I tried via live usb stick Fedora, Ubuntu and Mint, always the same problem.

Sorry for my language, but I’m really struggling to find the right way to describe my problem.
Thanks for any help

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I tried yesterday my laptop with another TV and it played all sounds without any problems. Then I tried my brothers laptop with my TV and also no problems.

For my laptop and TV it looks like it won’t play any sound if the sample rate is 44100Hz, audio with 48000Hz are played. Checked it with pacmd list-sinks and speaker-test.
In another forum there was someone with a similar problem with the sample rate and he fixed it with setting the default-sample-rate in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf to 48000, but that don’t work for me, still no sound is played from mp3 or audio files with 44100 sample rate.

Is there another way to change the default sample rate for hmdi output?

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I have the exact same issue that you described on my Raspberry Pi 400 (running Manjaro ARM), of which I am also using HDMI for audio playback. Along with what you said about Chromium, I have this issue with FluidSynth, which is a MIDI player (it can be forced to use PulseAudio instead of ALSA but it isn’t working for me atm).

The audio still plays on your speakers, though you will have to increase the volumes to unsafe levels to be able to hear it. My guess is that it’s a conflict with PulseAudio and ALSA (because Firefox will only play audio through PulseAudio), and that the trouble applications are using ALSA’s audio settings, which are either technically muted or have 1% volume. So perhaps the solution is to make PulseAudio to actually increase the volume of the ALSA application, or stop it from muting itself or something.

I have found that if you keep pavucontrol open, the issue will temporarily fix itself, so you don’t have to go hunting around for an audio sample whenever you want sound. The sample rate solution didn’t work on my end either, though for me the sample rate is swapped, it is 44100hz is giving me issues.

I’ve been having this issue since I first installed Manjaro ARM in January, so perhaps it could be a new bug.

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