I’ve been enjoying the KDE environment for a while
I just upgraded from Kubuntu to Kde Neon 6
and at the same time I just changed my PC
The operation didn’t go too bad but I have a problem with the sound:
My pc is a refurbished HP EliteDesk 800G4 DM 35W mini pc
I connected using a Display Port cable (mini side) to an HDMI port on the screen that I had before my hardware change
Namely a iiyama B1109HDS
The screen works correctly but the sound is not active on the screen but on the mini PC
Too bad because the listening quality on the integrated speakers of my screen is still superior
I don’t know where the sound configuration is for this case.
Thanks for your help
PS:
Before I changed my PC the screen was connected via DVI + sound card output jack and the sound quality was correct
The problem is more serious than that
Because HDMI/DisplayPort does not appear!!!
While the video works
bjc49@Micro-HP:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 16384 x 16384
DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-3 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 478mm x 269mm
1920x1080 60.00*+ 50.00 59.94
1920x1080i 60.00 50.00 59.94
1680x1050 59.88
1280x1024 75.02 60.02
1440x900 74.98 59.90
1280x960 60.00
1152x864 75.00
1280x720 60.00 50.00 59.94
1440x576 50.00
1024x768 75.03 70.07 60.00
832x624 74.55
800x600 72.19 75.00 60.32 56.25
720x576 50.00
720x480 60.00 59.94
640x480 75.00 72.81 66.67 60.00 59.94
720x400 70.08
It’s definitely a sound problem.
Only one card Intel UHD 630 i915
bjc49@Micro-HP:~$ pactl info
Chaîne du serveur : /run/user/1000/pulse/native
Version du protocole de bibliothèque : 35
Version du protocole du serveur : 35
Local : oui
Index client : 61
Tile Size : 65472
Nom d’utilisateur : bjc49
Nom d’hôte : Micro-HP
Nom du serveur : PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.48)
Version du serveur : 15.0.0
Spécification d’échantillon par défaut : float32le 2ch 48000Hz
Plan de canaux par défaut : front-left,front-right
Destination par défaut : alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo
Source par défaut : alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo.monitor
Cookie : 54f7:6069
Yes, Pipewire has replaced PulseAudio as the sound server - it works better for Wayland and also had video features. Pipewire supports the Pulse audio APIs using a compatibility layer called pipewire-pulse so all the PulseAudio stuff should just keep working as it is - Plasma audio stuff is still all PulseAudio, that API is still good enough for that and there’s no reason to change.
All the commands you showed only show that you have an Intel HDA audio codec - which I didn’t expect otherwise. The interesting question is why you can see the expected outputs? The commands I asked you to run list the outputs that the HDA codec advertised.
BTW - one reason you may not have audio through the DisplayPort is if the DP-HDMI adapter you use doesn’t have audio support. On my system I only get the “digital audio” outputs to choose from if the HDMI adapter is connected.
Don’t do that.
Pulse is not deprecated, but it is not developed as something to be used on a system in 2024.
Pipewire however, it “just works”. Not only with sound, but with capturing video too for example.
Do the other way around, because as explained by guss above, everything is baked into pipewire.
Probably, there are some people that for some reason refuses to use the magnificent pipewire that “just works” and want to use the extremely old pulse instead.
How to do that? I have no idea and think it is a dumb thing to do.
Edit
Your pipewire seems VERY old, I run v1.0.4 and you v0.3.48. Maybe that is the latest version you have access to via Ubuntu?
I do not run neon, so maybe someone else that actually does can come and help better.
I honestly thought pipewire was default on Ubuntu. It seems not.
So maybe removing it like you posted earlier is the way you SHOULD do it.
This looks promising though, but:
IMPORTANT: This is NOT officially supported by Ubuntu so far. It still may not work on some devices. Don’t do it on production machine!
I have to admit giving bad advice here in the thread, I’m sorry.
Hopefully someone that is actually running Neon can help.
If you do not want to wait, make backups and start playing around, there is no better way of learning than doing it yourself and finding out.
JUST MAKE BACKUPS FIRST!!!
The current version of pipewire on KDE Neon - based on Ubuntu 22.04 - is 0.3.48. This works well for me on an HTPC with a DisplayPort connected to a TV’s HDMI port.
To remove PulseAudio and rely solely on Pipewire, run: sudo apt purge pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
I still recommend you check your hardware configuration with this command: aplay --list-pcms
If there is audio support for HDMI on your system, it should have entries similar to this:
hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=7
HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 1
Direct hardware device without any conversions
And in the output of amixer contents you should see entries like this:
This is a hardware probe and it doesn’t matter which sound server you are using. If you see HDMI entries in the ALSA hardware probe then the problem may be in the sound server and we can investigate that more.
Picking up where the other guy left off (I literally have the same issue as he does), the output of the aplay command for my computer has three HDMI entries:
hw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=7
HDA NVidia, HDMI 1
Direct hardware device without any conversions
plughw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=7
HDA NVidia, HDMI 1
Hardware device with all software conversions
hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1
HDA NVidia, HDMI 1
HDMI Audio Output
However, the amixer contents command does not list any HDMI entries. Could that be a problem? And if so, what would some possible solutions be?
Open the “Profile” selection box in the settings like guss77 has done in his first answer/screenshot and show your screenshot with nothing HDMI there.
(The thing that shows “Sortie Stéréo analogigue” in bjc49 screenshot while he was ignoring it, for whatever reason.)
And the output of pactl list cards.
I may have confused things in my previous comment and that was misleading:
aplay and amixer are part of the ALSA software. ALSA is the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture and is the kernel sound API, but its user-mode side is configurable and it allows the system to configure the sound API to either pipe audio directly at the kernel (which incurs some severe limitations) or through several different software implementations. So:
aplay --list-pcms is a pure hardware scan - it looks at the software configuration, but it also probes for hardware PCMs (PCM is a misnomer and usually what we refer to - in sound APIs - as “a device that can take digital audio and render it”)
amixer contents shows what devices a software that uses the ALSA APIs will see, depending on your system configuratfion.
On my Neon system (now at 6.4 with an Ubuntu base of 24.04) ALSA is configured to use the PulseAudio API, and that talks to the Pipewire server to list all devices that PipeWire sees.
On my Fedora KDE Workstation system, ALSA is configured to use the PipeWire API directly, but only sees one PCM as “the PipeWire output” even though that system has 3 HDMI outputs and several analog ports. I’m not sure if this is a limitation of the PipeWire API (very very unlikely), the PipeWire ALSA module (possible, as it is much newer than the PulseAudio module and may not be feature complete), or a configuration choice by the Fedora team.
@Jack-Sparrow - you did not specify what operating system, or other configuration, you use so it really depends on that, but if amixer contents running from your KDE Plasma session lists nothing - that is a good indication that you have a configuration issue.
Next troubleshooting steps:
Please provide OS info. The output from kinfo in the terminal will be best.
Can you please run - in a terminal - the command pa-info > audio-debug.txt and attach the audio-debug.txt file here? This is a PulseAudio tool that basically runs all the possible debug tests and sums up everything. Its very hard to read, but it will save us a lot of back and forth. If you don’t have pa-info available - that is also an important piece of information.
And if you don’t have it available, please do not install it (it’s package).
Because, at least on Fedora using PipeWire I read a report of a user installing it after he was ask at the terminal “command not found would you like to install it?” or was pointed to the Package by such message or something along that line.
Big mistake, that will break your audio completely.
I posted about a similar issue. In the meantime I have been able to at least get sound but it stutters heavily. Tried various things like changing pulse.quantum values in pipewire-pulse.conf, changing settings via pavucontrol but improvements are minimal at best.
Searching the net throws lots of issues with Pipewire. It’s apparently the next best thing after sliced bread but it obviously still has a lot of kinks that need to be ironed out.
I am going to give it another try with a Neon live disk see if anything in my system was screwed up. If that shows the same behaviour then I am going to move to another distro. Preferably not Ubuntu since the source of these issues seem to lie upstream.
It’s 2025. When I started with Mepis Linux somewhere in 2004 sound was already a non-issue. I really don’t understand why we are back at square one with such a basic thing. This really should not happen.
OK. Just did some more testing. When I connect the TV and disable the laptop screen, then sound over HDMI is / seems to be fine.
So there must be some concurrency issue, or a driver thing or whatever. Fact is, this very same laptop never had sound issues over HDMI before. I am still thinking that Pipewire is a beta product that should not be forced on users.
Compared to 0.9.x, when I was thrown onto Pipewire with a new distro and my Pulseaudio configuration tweaks broke, it improved a lot.
Today I could basically do the same tweaks in Pipewire (except I found other workarounds and got used to them because unfortunately I had to).
But that reminds me that back in the days I could not longer play a game that required OSS.
OSS looked pretty solid to me and then came the next sliced bread.
That PipeWire especially for those without a dedicated Graphic card basically “hides” HDMI within the Profiles is a bummer, though. Not sure what they thought there.
and then came the next sliced bread.