USB-C headset detected, unmuted, but doesn't show up in pavucontrol and sound settings, no sound output

[nikgnomic]

Welcome to Manjaro forum

Bluetooth audio operates independent of ALSA and would not be affected by changes to ALSA configuration

ALSA configuration ~/.asound.conf will override the Manjaro ALSA
sysdefault configuration

@nikgnomic

Manjaro does not need an asound.conf (or ~/.asoundrc) . pulseaudio-alsa creates a file to configure ALSA to use PulseAudio as system default

/etc/alsa/conf.d/99-pulseaudio-default.conf

# Default to PulseAudio

pcm.!default {
type pulse
fallback “sysdefault”
hint {
show on
description “Default ALSA Output (currently PulseAudio Sound Server)”
}
}

ctl.!default {
type pulse
fallback “sysdefault”
}

The asound.conf posted will lock audio playback to card 0 device 5
(use aplay -l to list available playback devices)

If the configuration was modified to use to the card and device numbers appropriate to the USB headset, PulseAudio would use the USB headset exclusively

If everything is commented out in ~/.asound.conf the ‘empty’ file will still override the Manjaro defaults but has nothing to replace them with

If you want to use both internal speakers and USB headphones selected from within PulseAudio
I suggest:

1. remove file ~/.asound.conf

2. clear old settings from PulseAudio databases

   rm ~/.config/pulse/*.tdb ~/.config/pulse/cookie
   

3. reboot system to load default Manjaro ALSA configuration

4. check devices are recognised and error-free in ALSA – sudo alsa-info.sh --upload
   (onboard audio for Intel Comet Lake systems had problems with support for internal digital microphones that can affect other capture and playback devices, but audio codec should be patched and working with kernel v5.13)

5. check PulseAudio configuration – pacmd dump