[Solved] Selecting Pipewire Pro Audio kills sound in Plasma

[HuskyDog]

I am running Plasma desktop with Pipewire on a Raspberry Pi 5

I have two user accounts on my machine (neither of them is root) which both wish to use the audio system (but not simultaneously). If I log in as user "A" then everything works just fine. I can play multimedia files in - for example - VLC and the sound comes out of the speakers via HDMI correctly.

However, if I log out at user "A" and then log in as user "B" then there is no sound at all! Further more, there aren't even any sound devices! The "Audio Volume" widget on the task bar is crossed through and hovering over it produces a message which reads "No output or input devices found". If I select "Configure Audio Devices" then I get the "Audio - System Settings" dialogue which is basically completely blank. There is a "Show Inactive Devices" button, but this just causes the Dummy playback device to appear.

If I log out of user "B" and back into user "A" and also open "Audio - System Settings" then I can see my "HDMI / DisplayPort" device listed under "Playback Devices" with a volume control and "Test" button, both of which work. There is also an entry for "Inactive Cards" which shows "Built-in Audio" selected "Off".

As an experiment I created a new user "C" and logged in. As expected, sound worked correctly. I opened "Audio - System Settings" and observed that next to the HDMI playback device there was menu which allowed me to select "Off", "HDMI" or "Pro Audio". I selected "Pro Audio" and the entire HDMI playback device immediately disappeared together with the menu which might have allowed me to reverse the effect. I was then in basically the same none-working and apparently unrecoverable state as user "B".

Does anyone know how to reverse the disastrous effect of selecting "Pro Audio"? I imagine that I could delete all of the configuration for user "B", but that sounds a bit drastic! Yes, I have tried re-booting.

SOLUTION (sort of)

By experimenting with newly created users and watching what files changed with 'find' I deduced that the problem seemed to lie in ~/.local/state/wireplumber. If I logged out, deleted this folder and then logged back in again so that it was re-created with a default setting then the HDMI output re-appeared. It still seems to be to be a bug that selecting "Pro Audio" removes the menu which you used to select it so that you can't revert the setting, but for now I have working sound.

[flexibeast]

Off the top of my head, this sounds like the WirePlumber process(es) not being shut down when a user logs out, which they should be .... How are you logging in? Via a Display Manager, manually from the console, something else?

[Anon-E-moose]

are you sure that multiple instances of wireplumber aren't running (per user)
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[Pythagoras1]

exactly the same happened to me right now on manjaro for raspberry pi 4. thanks for pointing to the solution!
i guess that can be reported to upstream

btw, the default-profile config file still listed both hdmi ports as set to "pro audio". the working configuration has no default-profile file at all. it could be sufficient to just remove the default-profile config.

[szatox]