Splitting front and rear outputs on Realtek HD using indep_hp

Support Sound
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Hello,
trying to get rid of Windows and switching to Linux, so I installed Manjaro and like it so far. One thing that troubles me is that I can’t get seperate outputs on headphones and speakers, which is very important for me. The sound chip is a Realtek ALC892.
Searching here and elsewhere led me to two potential solutions:

Creating two additional sinks as seen in wiki.archlinux[dot]org/title/PulseAudio/Examples#Splitting_front/rear (didn’t work, yes I copypasted the correct device name)

Setting indep_hp to yes in /sys/class/sound/hwC1D0/hints as seen in kernel[dot]org/doc/html/v4.18/sound/hd-audio/notes.html (section Hints)

The second solution seems to be exactly what I need but I struggle with the step of reconfiguring the driver. When I set the Hint in HDAjackretask and click Apply I get a “Device busy” error. Same when I try editing the files with an editor as root, I get a “No permission” error. Tried disabling the device in Pulseaudio but that didn’t help.

Anyone know the correct procedure to reconfigure the driver using the indep_hp hint? Help would be much appreciated. Oh and this functionality would be really useful in pavucontrol. Saw lots of similarly frustrated users when looking for a solution.

Thanks,
Tim

Edit: Found this and it did actually stop Pulseaudio and allowed HDAjackretask to set the hints, however it’s not working, the device is not split into two devices as intended. :frowning:
systemctl --user stop pulseaudio.socket
systemctl --user stop pulseaudio.service

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try using pipewire instead? sudo pacman -S pipewire manjaro-pipewire

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Getting some dependency conflict errors when I try that and since it appears to be a driver thing I’m not sure that’d help solve the issue of not having two output devices. Also I just noticed that the inputs don’t appear in pavucontrol, so something’s up. Being a noob doesn’t help either and I’d rather not break stuff yet…
Edit: Just noticed that aplay -l now shows “Alt Analog” which wasn’t there before. But it doesn’t appear in pavucontrol…

(Terminal localization setting is another thing that’s amazingly difficult to find)
Edit: The missing input was fixed by setting the device to 5.1+analog input in pavucontrol.
I’d also be happy to use the non-free Realtek driver but can’t find any info on how to activate it (Apparently it’s included in the Kernel?)

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Apply Now button in hdajackretask will usually fail with message “Device Busy” if PulseAudio is not stopped or or suspended from using ALSA audio devices.

But Install Boot Override usually works to make changes to audio device permanent after reboot

But even though ALSA is now showing a 2nd Alt Analog sub device is available, detection of the card in PulseAudio would only find one stereo output sink or surround sound profiles combining the stereo channels

To make both sinks available in PulseAudio independently, a user can create a custom profile in /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/profile-sets/
The file native-instruments-audio4dj.conf has custom profiles for 2 stereo outputs - analog-stereo-a and analog-stereo-b and analog-stereo-all
Writing pulseaudio profiles | freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio

Or the stereo sinks can be loaded statically in PulseAudio configuration ~/.config/pulse/default.pa or /etc/pulse/default.pa before automatic detection module-udev-detect is loaded

load-module module-alsa-sink hw:Generic,0 
load-module module-alsa-sink hw:Generic,2
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Sorry for the late reply. I did “Install Boot Override” but the sound mixer software would only show a single port. After months of disgruntedly using Windows I finally “fixed” the issue by installing manjaro-pipewire and inputting these commands found on reddit:

systemctl --user mask pulseaudio.socket --now
systemctl --user disable pulseaudio.service --now
systemctl --user enable pipewire.socket --now
systemctl --user start pipewire.service

Second command failed but after a reboot I finally can switch between headphones and speakers. Unfortunately pavucontrol will still only let me switch between specific devices for programs, not ports… (Browser with Youtube to speakers, Teamspeak to headphones is the desired usecase).

I’m honestly shocked that basic audio for common hardware is still this troublesome in 2021. Thanks for the reply nikgnomic but that’s way over my head.

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