Gregory Nowak via Dng said on Fri, 12 Sep 2025 19:15:59 -0700

>On Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 01:22:04PM +0100, fraser via Dng wrote:
>> Since the last 2 or 3 kernel upgrades, the audio has stopped working,
>> unpredictably and starts working, unpredictably. It's not failing
>> hardware: two of the laptops fail and then resume at the same time,
>> side by side. If it helps, one of them (a Lenovo Thinkpad)
>> occasionally screams in pain. Sometimes a fix survives a reboot,
>> sometimes not.
>
>Sounds like sometimes your speakers are card0, and sometimes the HDMI
>output is card0. What does:
>
>cat /proc/asound/cards
>
>say? What does:
>
>lspci -v |grep Audio
>
>say? What does:
>
>lsmod |grep snd_
>
>say? I'm personally in favor of blowing away pulseaudio and pipewire,
>but those may not be what's causing your issues.

Hi Greg,

I've been ALSA-only since ALSA replaced ESD 20+ years ago, right up
until 2-3 weeks ago when I had to install Pulseaudio to let my
home-grown playlist handler function correctly even when other
applications were hooked to the sound system.

The switching around of cards after reboots or even
disconnect/reconnect of USB sound cards happens. Luckily, if your
distro gives you a good and proper /etc/pulse/client.conf , you can
(and I think probably should) have no ~/.asoundrc , and your system
will automagically work regardless of the current assignment of cards.

Pulseaudio is a pain in the ass and it's the land of a thousand mutes,
but it can't be blamed for the audio card shuffle.

By the way, I've discovered a way to tame Pulseaudio on Void Linux, and
would be happy to help people do the same thing on Devuan.

SteveT

Steve Litt

http://444domains.com