Problem when switching to HDMI audio

[CyberMuz]

Hi!

I'm having problems with HDMI sound on my system (Lenovo SL500 laptop, Nvidia graphics). When I plug the HDMI cable I'm not able to switch the sound so that it goes only to TV and not to the speakers. If in Pavucontrol or Multimedia>Phonon I select Profile "Digital stereo (HDMI) output" I end up with the sound going to both the TV and the laptop speakers which is very annoying. The only workaround I have found is to open alsamixer in console and turn the Master volume all the way down. This mutes the speakers on laptop and sound goes only to HDMI.
I have no idea how to fix this problem. :-/

[Fitzcarraldo]

When I launch PulseAudio Volume Control (media-sound/pavucontrol) I see two Profiles on the Configuration tab: 'HDMI Audio' and 'Built-in Audio'. After I have selected 'Digital Stereo (HDMI) Output' as the Profile for 'HDMI Audio' I select 'Off' for the Profile of 'Built-in Audio', and then sound only comes out of the TV. Does that not happen in your case?

Do you have PulseAudio Preferences (media-sound/paprefs) installed? If you do, when you launch it do you have 'Add virtual output device for simultaneous output on all local sound cards' ticked on the 'Simultaneous Output' tab? If you do, you could untick that to see what happens.
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Fitzcarraldo's blog

[anyc]

As PA remembers the sinks for streams, maybe your sound is always directed to the combined sink as Fitzcarraldo already suspected. You don't necessarily have to deactivate this. Instead you can also choose the HDMI sink in the mixer for the stream or you can use a daemon like http://github.com/anyc/mplugd that changes the output automatically if you plug in a TV.