[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#1105160: pipewire: Pipewire (or possibly ALSA itself) does not support passthrough on USB Audio ALC 4080

[Kyle Rose]

Package: pipewire
Version: 1.4.2-1
Severity: normal
Tags: upstream

Dear Maintainer,

I have an Asus ROG Strix X670E-E Gaming Wifi motherboard, which apparently has an ALC 4080 audio chipset attached via USB (internally to the motherboard circuitry). While the latest version of alsa-ucm-conf in Trixie has a configuration for this audio chipset's USB ID (0b05:1a52), none of the profiles in pipewire seem to support passthrough audio, so I cannot send AC3 or DTS to my receiver via Toslink.

This is not urgent for me, as (a) stereo works fine, and (b) I have a trusty SoundBlaster X-Fi that still passes AC3 through like a champ, so I'm using that for the moment. But it seems absurd not to use the audio chipset on my expensive motherboard. Passthrough works fine on Windows without any special driver support, so I know this is a software issue.

Here's a list of relevant packages installed on my machine:

$ apt-show-versions -r 'alsa|pipewire|pulse' | grep -v 'not installed'
alsa-topology-conf:all/trixie 1.2.5.1-3 uptodate
alsa-ucm-conf:all/trixie 1.2.14-1 uptodate
alsa-utils:amd64/trixie 1.2.14-1 uptodate
gstreamer1.0-alsa:amd64/trixie 1.26.1-1 uptodate
libcanberra-pulse:amd64/trixie 0.30-18 uptodate
libkf6pulseaudioqt5:amd64/trixie 1.7.0-1 uptodate
libkpipewire-data:all/trixie 6.3.4-1 uptodate
libkpipewire6:amd64/trixie 6.3.4-1 uptodate
libkpipewiredmabuf6:amd64/trixie 6.3.4-1 uptodate
libkpipewirerecord6:amd64/trixie 6.3.4-1 uptodate
libpipewire-0.3-0t64:amd64/trixie 1.4.2-1 uptodate
libpipewire-0.3-common:all/trixie 1.4.2-1 uptodate
libpipewire-0.3-modules:amd64/trixie 1.4.2-1 uptodate
libpulse-mainloop-glib0:amd64/trixie 17.0+dfsg1-2+b1 uptodate
libpulse0:amd64/trixie 17.0+dfsg1-2+b1 uptodate
libpulse0:i386/trixie 17.0+dfsg1-2+b1 uptodate
libpulsedsp:amd64/trixie 17.0+dfsg1-2+b1 uptodate
libsox-fmt-alsa:amd64/trixie 14.4.2+git20190427-5+b3 uptodate
libzita-alsa-pcmi0t64:amd64/trixie 0.6.1-1.1+b1 uptodate
pipewire:amd64/trixie 1.4.2-1 uptodate
pipewire-bin:amd64/trixie 1.4.2-1 uptodate
pipewire-doc:all/trixie 1.4.2-1 uptodate
pipewire-jack:amd64/trixie 1.4.2-1 uptodate
pipewire-pulse:amd64/trixie 1.4.2-1 uptodate
pulseaudio-utils:amd64/trixie 17.0+dfsg1-2+b1 uptodate
qml6-module-org-kde-pipewire:amd64/trixie 6.3.4-1 uptodate

Thanks,
Kyle


-- System Information:
Debian Release: trixie/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 6.12.22-amd64 (SMP w/32 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages pipewire depends on:
ii  adduser                  3.150
ii  init-system-helpers      1.68
ii  libpipewire-0.3-modules  1.4.2-1
ii  pipewire-bin             1.4.2-1

pipewire recommends no packages.

pipewire suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information