UCM: Realtek ALC4080 issues
Summary
- UCM defined profiles show as unavailable in Pipewire
- both Pulseaudio and Pipewire are unable to reliably control ALSA mixer controls
Environment
- Debian testing up to date
- KDE Plasma v5.25.5
- MSI MAG X570S TORPEDO MAX mainboard with onboard Realtek ALC4080 USB card
- pa-info-pulseaudio.txt.gz
Steps to reproduce
- always reproducible with Realtek ALC4080 ucm profile (all versions)
-
- Pulseaudio: always reproducible with Realtek ALC4080 ucm profile in current master git branch
- Pipewire: reproducible with Realtek ALC4080 ucm profile in current master git branch by selecting profiles "HiFi 2.0 channels" or "HiFi 5.1 channels" ("HiFi 7.1 channels" profile works)
What is the current bug behavior?
- since the UCM defined profiles are unavailable, to have the sound card working in Gnome is required the manual selection of the working profile after every login, while in KDE Plasma unavailable profiles are not force-selectable in any way and the only way to have a working sound card is by selecting a profile via pavucontrol or
pacmd set-card-profile
- Pulseaudio can't control any of the ALSA mixer controls: while lowering or increasing the volume, the ALSA mixer controls don't change and in some cases
alsamixer
is required to change their setting; i.e.: Pulseaudio volume is at 100% and no sound can be heard because the ALSA mixer controls are at 0 or muted; only using Pipewire, with the 7.1 profile, the ALSA controls correctly follow Pipewire volume and mute setting.
What is the expected correct behavior?
- UCM defined profiles should result available; only this way the DEs can automatically select a working profile without user intervention
- the sound daemons should be able to control the ALSA mixer controls, so that all sound subsystem management can be done at high level, in the optimal way and consistently
External references
- Pipewire issue #2744
- alsa-ucm-conf issue #227