Bug 422826

Summary: Switching between multiple microphone devices doesn't work
Product: [Unmaintained] plasma-pa Reporter: Nate Graham <nate>
Component: appletAssignee: David Rosca <nowrep>
Status: RESOLVED UPSTREAM    
Severity: normal CC: nicolas.fella, plasma-bugs-null
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Other   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments: pacmd list-cards output
How plasma-pa applet looks for me

Description Nate Graham 2020-06-11 15:39:38 UTC
Created attachment 129236 [details]
pacmd list-cards output

On my laptop (Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga), audio devices are represented as different devices, not as multiple ports of the same device. So for example I have two microphone devices: one for the audio jack and one for the built-in microphone array. The plasma-pa applet shows both, and gives each one a combobox so yu can switch between them.

Alas, it doesn't work. Clicking the radio button for the headphone device doesn't work, and audio is always recorded from the built-in microphone array. There is also a menu item saying "record all audio via this device" but that also does nothing.
Comment 1 Nate Graham 2020-06-11 15:40:11 UTC
Created attachment 129237 [details]
How plasma-pa applet looks for me
Comment 2 Nate Graham 2020-06-11 16:10:19 UTC
It's possible that this is ultimately a PulseAudio or kernel problem, since the microphones really should be combined into multiple ports of the same device. For that, I've filed https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/issues/913 and https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=208133 (not sure which level of the stack is at fault for that).
Comment 3 Nate Graham 2020-06-12 00:09:45 UTC
Found out that this is not an issue in the applet. The audio source for the jack is always disabled/unplugged due to driver bugs, which is why switching to it doesn't work. I will report a PA or kernel bug.