Xfce Forum

cajun1le

Member

Registered: 2016-02-22

Posts: 3

Trouble with xfce-mixer with two sound devices (HDMI and ALC887-VD)

Usually I can figure these things out but I haven't come across any documentation for these two topics.  What I am trying to accomplish is to get the “xfce-mixer” panel applet to function with the analog sound device instead of the HDMI one.  For some reason after selecting the proper sound device, “xfce-mixer” defers back to the HDMI device instead which doesn't allow me to control the “master” or “PCM” outputs.  And not to confuse anyone, I am able hear audio through my speakers from the proper sound device.  Its just that the xfce-mixer panel applet is not allowing me to control any outputs (I am able to control things through the program itself, just not the panel applet).

To combat this I've tried changing the default sound device in “/etc/asound.conf” with the following string:

defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.pcm.device 0
defaults.ctl.card 1

pcm.!default {
	type hw
	card 1
	device 0
}

Here's the output from “aplay -l”:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic_1 [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: ALC887-VD Analog [ALC887-VD Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

When I run "aplay" to test for the proper device, it works.

aplay -D plughw:1,0 /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

After setting a default device in “asound.conf” it did not fix the xfce-mixer panel applet issue. So, I started looking a little deeper and I noticed that both audio devices are aliased as “HD-Audio Generic”.  That idea caused me to look into how to alias the two sound output devices into something else and see if that will help “xfce-mixer” differentiate the two devices.  And that is where I am at now.  Alsamixer see's both the Realtek ALC887-VD and ATI R6xx HDMI and I am able to control them but the card aliases are both HD-Audio Generic.  Or then again, I can be completely off base on this one.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

J

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,494

Re: Trouble with xfce-mixer with two sound devices (HDMI and ALC887-VD)

Hello and welcome.

xfce4-mixer has and "active-card" xfconf setting. You can view and edit it via Settings Manager > Settings Editor > xfce4-mixer channel. I'm not 100% sure about how this works, so I'll link to this and this document.

Also, here are my "aplay -l" reults:

$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: 92HD91BXX Analog [92HD91BXX Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

...and my active-card is set to "HDAIntelPCHAlsamixer":

$ xfconf-query -c xfce4-mixer -lv
/active-card                       HDAIntelPCHAlsamixer
/sound-card                        HDAIntelPCHAlsamixer
/sound-cards/HDAIntelPCHAlsamixer  <<UNSUPPORTED>>
/volume-step-size                  5
/window-height                     400
/window-width                      640

...which is a combination of the words in the square brackets minus spaces plus the word "Alsamixer". I would suggest you try "HDAudioGenericAlsamixer" or "PlaybackBuiltinAudioAnalogStereoPulseAudioMixer" if you use pulseaudio.

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cajun1le

Member

Registered: 2016-02-22

Posts: 3

Re: Trouble with xfce-mixer with two sound devices (HDMI and ALC887-VD)

Thanks for the welcome!

I just gave your above post a try and I carefully read through the two links from above.  I'm going to have to research into where xfce4-volumed is pulling it's default settings from.  Every time I restart the process after editing xfce4-mixer settings it overrides my changes by adding the below entry:

/sound-card                        HDAudioGenericAlsamixer

I ran "pacmd" to see what pulse audio was seeing and it lists both the HDMI output and the ALC887 as one indexed unit (I'm thinking it should be two devices).  I'll report back once I've documented all the steps that I took.

Last edited by cajun1le (2016-02-23 06:45:52)

cajun1le

Member

Registered: 2016-02-22

Posts: 3

Re: Trouble with xfce-mixer with two sound devices (HDMI and ALC887-VD)

Well, I found the solution to my problem.  For some reason xfce4-volumed is touchy when it comes to working with alsa.  In order for me to get xfce4-mixer to work properly with the analog audio device I had to properly configure my pulseaudio playback.  Whenever volumed directly connects to alsa, you can't tell volumed which playback device to use (which what was going on in my case when there are more than one active device).  The below are the two topics that set me on the correct path.

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/xfce4-volumed/

Originally linked by ToZ:  http://askubuntu.com/questions/130927/h … in-xubuntu

Last edited by cajun1le (2016-02-24 04:51:47)