Bug 489083

So it seems like we're detecting this thing as a microphone:

02:13:15.878: pulse-input: Started recording from 'alsa_output.usb-HP__Inc_HyperX_Virtual_Surround_Sound_00000000-00.analog-stereo.monitor'

Can you comment on what that device is? Is it a physical device of some sort? Or a virtual device? And what exactly is it recording?

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #1)
> So it seems like we're detecting this thing as a microphone:
> 
> 02:13:15.878: pulse-input: Started recording from
> 'alsa_output.usb-HP__Inc_HyperX_Virtual_Surround_Sound_00000000-00.analog-
> stereo.monitor'
> 
> Can you comment on what that device is? Is it a physical device of some
> sort? Or a virtual device? And what exactly is it recording?

Hi there.

The device is this: https://youtu.be/17EV3S9A90E?t=112
It's some kind of adapter that is able to transform the sound into surround. The audio quality comes from the card itself, so it's a USB sound card. However, I don't use the surround feature of it (you have to press the "7.1" button phsyically to enable it).

I have to plug the P2/P3 cable from the headset and then the USB card plugs into the PC with a normal USB port (and I'm not sure if this counts as a virtual device). That's where the sound of my PC comes from. It's possible to use this headset without the USB card.

The device can capture/listen to every sound on my system, because it is basically the PC/desktop audio entirely. I don't believe it's literally "recording" something, though.

Thank you for your attention.

More clarifications:

The same USB sound card P2/P3 cable connection is used for the microphone. The microphone is pluggable in the headset (see https://youtu.be/N7msId4tV8w?t=174). Since I have a separate table microphone, I don't use the microphone from the headset and I have it physically unplugged from the headset itself.

To avoid an unnecessary device on KDE, instead of using "Analog Stereo Duplex" for the headset, I use "Analog Stereo Output", so it doesn't create the microphone device. Even when using "Analog Stereo Output", microphone usage is still detected/reported by Plasma.

The only way not to report microphone usage is to use "Analog Stereo Output" and set my table microphone to "Off" instead of "Mono Input", but that doesn't seem correct because I'm not using the microphone because OBS was told not to use it.

I have noticed something:

https://i.imgur.com/NTgigyh.png

This is always present. If I set my table microphone to "Off", the content of the screenshot does not disappear from the Sound System Settings menu. However, as described before, it does not report microphone usage when the actual microphone is set to "Off" instead of "Mono Input" (even when OBS was told not to use the actual microphone). Here is OBS audio source settings: https://i.imgur.com/L8vUH80.png

Tested some recordings with the microphone set to "Off" and "Mono Input", restarting OBS each time and verifying program settings after changing system settings just to be sure, and I can say that the actual microphone is not recorded. Also tried speaking, but still, no microphone audio, so OBS is correctly following the audio source settings. The desktop audio is always recorded, as configured.

Even without microphone audio being actually recorded, Plasma reports microphone usage.

To further clarify, when I say "microphone usage", I mean the system tray icon.

Likely to be a duplicate of 410637 , although this one is easier to find, I'm not sure there's anything PulseAudio-specific in the issue.

The issue seems to be in a quite silly state as there are different interests at play. The microphone indicator is more of a recording indicator currently, but changes like https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-pa/-/commit/e4cd6f30eb4ffe86147b2058a12aeabc36a181ba indicate that this wasn't really intended.

On one hand I'm fond of the accidental security feature, on the other hand I understand how it's confusing, and should be a functionality provided elsewhere.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 410637 ***