i3WM: Alsa and pulseaudio don't work together, no sound through my 3.5mm jack headphone

Hi Manjaro Crew,

I’m having some issues with my i3WM sound. It might be all non connected issues or just different issues, I don’t know.

I’m trying to describe my issues the best I can: When I start my PC, Pulseaudio does not seem to be connected to alsa player. Sound is coming already through my internal speakers.

Screenshot from 2021-10-13 08-49-26

After I manually execute following commands I can re-establish the connection.

$ pulseaudio -k && pulseaudio &

Screenshot from 2021-10-13 08-51-27

As you can see In the picture here above, the pavucontrol GUI starts working again as it should but it does not stop here. When a 3.5mm jack headphone is inserted, the PC recognizes this and stops the speaker output. The pavucontrol GUI also recognizes this and indicates the output has been changed to a headphone set, but … no sound, Nor in or out

En plus, the little Alsa desktop indicator does not switch to the right output source when this has been changed. This indicator controls (or has a part in controlling ) the volume control via the keyboard, for example.

( I also must mention my Teams sessions have crackling sounds in them, but this could be another issue. )

Clearly there is something off here. I was hoping someone here on the forum could help me out.

My system:

$ inxi --admin --verbosity=7 --filter --no-host --width
System:
  Kernel: 5.10.68-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.1.0 
  parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.10-x86_64 
  root=UUID=9e7bfd9e-d45b-4ef0-b169-c42259bd06c5 rw quiet apparmor=1 
  security=apparmor udev.log_priority=3 i915.reset=1 
  Desktop: i3 4.19.1 info: i3bar vt: 7 dm: LightDM 1.30.0 
  Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux 
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Precision 7730 v: N/A serial: <filter> 
  Chassis: type: 10 serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: Dell model: 09G96M v: A00 serial: <filter> UEFI: Dell v: 1.15.3 
  date: 03/04/2021 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 45.3 Wh (100.0%) condition: 45.3/64.0 Wh (70.7%) 
  volts: 8.3 min: 7.6 model: SMP DELL RY3F977 type: Li-poly serial: <filter> 
  status: Full 
Memory:
  RAM: total: 15.39 GiB used: 5.4 GiB (35.1%) 
  RAM Report: permissions: Unable to run dmidecode. Root privileges required. 
CPU:
  Info: 6-Core model: Intel Core i7-8750H bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
  arch: Kaby Lake note: check family: 6 model-id: 9E (158) stepping: A (10) 
  microcode: EA cache: L2: 9 MiB bogomips: 52815 
  Speed: 813 MHz min/max: 800/4100 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 813 2: 810 3: 801 
  4: 804 5: 813 6: 808 7: 823 8: 816 9: 840 10: 801 11: 801 12: 810 
  Flags: 3dnowprefetch abm acpi adx aes aperfmperf apic arat arch_perfmon art 
  avx avx2 bmi1 bmi2 bts clflush clflushopt cmov constant_tsc cpuid 
  cpuid_fault cx16 cx8 de ds_cpl dtes64 dtherm dts epb ept ept_ad erms est 
  f16c flexpriority flush_l1d fma fpu fsgsbase fxsr ht hwp hwp_act_window 
  hwp_epp hwp_notify ibpb ibrs ida intel_pt invpcid invpcid_single lahf_lm lm 
  mca mce md_clear mmx monitor movbe mpx msr mtrr nonstop_tsc nopl nx pae pat 
  pbe pcid pclmulqdq pdcm pdpe1gb pebs pge pln pni popcnt pse pse36 pti pts 
  rdrand rdseed rdtscp rep_good sdbg sep smap smep ss ssbd sse sse2 sse4_1 
  sse4_2 ssse3 stibp syscall tm tm2 tpr_shadow tsc tsc_adjust 
  tsc_deadline_timer vme vmx vnmi vpid x2apic xgetbv1 xsave xsavec xsaveopt 
  xsaves xtopology xtpr 
  Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled 
  Type: l1tf 
  mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable 
  Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable 
  Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI 
  Type: spec_store_bypass 
  mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
  Type: spectre_v1 
  mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional, 
  IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling 
  Type: srbds mitigation: Microcode 
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Cannon Lake PCH cAVS vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel 
  v: kernel alternate: snd_soc_skl,snd_sof_pci bus-ID: 00:1f.3 
  chip-ID: 8086:a348 class-ID: 0403 
  Device-2: AMD Baffin HDMI/DP Audio [Radeon RX 550 640SP / RX 560/560X] 
  vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 01:00.1 
  chip-ID: 1002:aae0 class-ID: 0403 
  Device-3: Logitech Headset H390 type: USB 
  driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid bus-ID: 1-3:7 chip-ID: 046d:0a44 
  class-ID: 0300 
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.10.68-1-MANJARO running: yes 
  Sound Server-2: JACK v: 1.9.19 running: no 
  Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: no  

Hello,

that is the clue …

2 Likes

Enable pulseaudio with systemctl --user enable --now pulseaudio.service

1 Like

All right @bogdancovaciu @mithrial

Strangely enough the systemctl service could not be started, although it is present on my system. Now I’ve found this file, this became a little detail. I did a reboot and the system starts as it should.
Thank you very much.

 $ sudo find / -iname "pulseaudio.service"
/usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service
  Sound Server-2: JACK v: 1.9.19 running: no 
  Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: yes 

As for the 3.5mm jack problem. I’ve found a bug report while browsing this forum. Apparently, there was a change in a kernel source file

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=209045
Sound from speakers no sound from 3.5mm jack-audio - #20 by ZeroAnarchy

output has been changed to a headphone set, but … no sound

Screenshot of pavucontrol in post#1 is showing Headphones output is muted

muted

1 Like

Thanks @nikgnomic for your reply

The icon is always there and shows not much of a difference when it actually muted. When it’s muted the icon square has a grey shade overlay. Like this:

Screenshot from 2021-10-13 16-55-20

1 Like

my mistake - pavucontrol is showing a different icon my system

1 Like

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