Sat, 20 Dec 2014
HDMI Sound
Another problem related to getting a new mainboard was sound. The mainboard has an on-board Intel GPU, which I use for the first seat. Unlike my previous graphics card for the Seat0, it is connected by HDMI port to my monitor. So I have decided to give sound over HDMI a try.
The problem was that it did not work: using pavucontrol, I have verified that sound is routed correctly to the HDMI interface, but the interface said that the output is disconnected. And I did not know how to "connect" it, because physically it has obviously been connected.
After some hours of searching I have found the following solution:
$ pactl list cards ... Card #1 Name: alsa_card.pci-0000_00_03.0 Driver: module-alsa-card.c Profiles: output:hdmi-stereo: Digital Stereo (HDMI) Output (sinks: 1, sources: 0, priority: 5400, available: yes) output:hdmi-surround: Digital Surround 5.1 (HDMI) Output (sinks: 1, sources: 0, priority: 300, available: yes) output:hdmi-stereo-extra1: Digital Stereo (HDMI 2) Output (sinks: 1, sources: 0, priority: 5200, available: yes) output:hdmi-surround-extra1: Digital Surround 5.1 (HDMI 2) Output (sinks: 1, sources: 0, priority: 100, available: yes) output:hdmi-stereo-extra2: Digital Stereo (HDMI 3) Output (sinks: 1, sources: 0, priority: 5200, available: yes) off: Off (sinks: 0, sources: 0, priority: 0, available: yes) Active Profile: output:hdmi-stereo Ports: hdmi-output-0: HDMI / DisplayPort (priority: 5900, latency offset: 0 usec, not available) Properties: device.icon_name = "video-display" Part of profile(s): output:hdmi-stereo, output:hdmi-surround hdmi-output-1: HDMI / DisplayPort 2 (priority: 5800, latency offset: 0 usec, not available) Properties: device.icon_name = "video-display" Part of profile(s): output:hdmi-stereo-extra1, output:hdmi-surround-extra1 hdmi-output-2: HDMI / DisplayPort 3 (priority: 5700, latency offset: 0 usec, available) Properties: device.icon_name = "video-display" device.product.name = "PLE2607WS" Part of profile(s): output:hdmi-stereo-extra2 $ pactl set-card-profile 1 output:hdmi-stereo-extra2
Apparently PulseAudio knows that the hdmi-stereo-extra2 is the only connected output, but remains set up to hdmi-stereo instead. Now that is not very user-friendly, plug&play, etc.