Bug#851826: pulseaudio: USB headset detected, but no sound

[Felipe Sateler]

On 22 January 2017 at 02:37, Michael Haag <haagmj at fastmail.net> wrote:
> That works in most instances, but it doesn't work in my use case. I have
> an older OpenGL/OpenAL/OSS game that takes control of the keyboard and
> mouse when it loads. This means I cannot access pulseaudio to change
> devices.

Can you switch to a different VT? You can try this by using
ctrl+alt+fN (with N from 1 to 7). There it should be possible to login
to a text console and query pulseaudio there.

If that doesn't work, setting up ssh in that computer and logging in
via that should give you a shell with which we can inspect what
pulseaudio is doing.

> Oddly, there is no need to do this when my headset is plugged
> in using the legacy audio jacks. Sound is directed to BOTH my speakers
> and my headset.

This sounds like those are picked up by the system as a single
surround output rather than two distinct devices.

>
> The other case is when I use a Windows-only language learning
> application which I run in a VM. The headset works with both legacy and
> USB connections, but the sound quality with USB is so poor the
> application cannot match my spoken pronunciation to the recorded voice,
> making it impossible to use the program.

Is the quality only bad with qemu? Did you set the qemu output driver
to pulseaudio? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/QEMU#Host

> Maybe neither of the above can be attributed soley to pulseaudio, but I
> didn't have this problem with my legacy headset. I can get by with the
> legacy audio jacks, but the USB problem means I can't use some of the
> headset features, such as surround sound.

It doesn't sound like there is any bug in pulseaudio. From what I can
tell, you just haven't told your app to output to the correct device
(which is hard because it grabs the mouse and keyboard).

Also, have you tried to run your OSS program through padsp? This may
make your app better behaved.

-- 

Saludos,
Felipe Sateler