Arch Linux

Hi,

Pulseaudio is installing the file start-pulseaudio-x11. It (among a few other things) contains this check:
if [ x"$KDE_FULL_SESSION" = x"true" ]; then
/usr/bin/pactl load-module module-device-manager "do_routing=1" > /dev/null
fi

That is for Plasma's sound management. That module kills the functionality of pulseaudio's module-switch-on-connect module. That (module-switch-on-connect) takes care of switching sound to the device you plug in. So if you plug in a USB headset, audio is neatly redirected from wherever it was playing to that newly plugged in device.

The fact that module-device-manager breaks that has been known for years. I have reported that in https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/issues/509 about 2 years ago.
One the KDE side David Rosca is the maintainer of plasma's sound handling, but that only goes as far as the pulseaudio handling. He himself also says the module should probably go, see https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/issues/509#note_14838 for more details. No action has been taken though, for years.

Now i know Arch is trying to stay true to upstream as much as possible. That is a very good thing!
But for pulseaudio and where it is very obviously breaking sound (if you are in the corner case area*) is something that might deserve an exception. Therefore i'd like to ask to remove those KDE lines from start-pulseaudio-x11.

* Yes, you only get into this issue if you're using multiple audio devices while having a "main" audio device plugged into the jack port. So if you then also plugin a USB headphone and/or a bluetooth one then you get this issue. (for more, see https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/issues/509#note_128604)

Best regards,
Mark