[somewhat solved] kmix alternative for Plasma/Wayland + Alsa

[gorg86]

Hello,

I'm looking for a kmix alternative that's for a Plasma-Wayland install with just Alsa or Pipewire support.
I'm currently using a workaround for my volume knob on the keyboard that adjusts the volume with amixer and I pipe the current volume percentage to gui-apps/wob.
What I want is just a tray app that shows me current volume and is adjustable with my mouse scroll wheel.
A program that would just run my amixer script would suffice.
Pulseaudio and Libpulse are masked on this system, a hard dependency on those would be a nono.

thanks

[asturm]

kde-plasma/plasma-pa

[gorg86]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I don't want a dependency on libpulse and pulseaudio.

[asturm]

I'm confused, you considered pipewire support, and pipewire is *the* sound daemon replacement for pulseaudio serving applications with (still, most of the time) libpulse support.

[gorg86]

I use pipewire because of Wayland permission issues so I can do screenshots and have window previews etc. and not as a sound server.
But I'd consider activating it's sound-server useflag, maybe.

[dmpogo]

I use pipewire because of Wayland permission issues so I can do screenshots and have window previews etc. and not as a sound server.
But I'd consider activating it's sound-server useflag, maybe.

You mean you want your sound to be pure ALSA ? Not pulseaudio, nor pipewire ?

[szatox]

That's what he said.
Which means any applet for ALSA should be fine. Which begs the question: why is it even necessary to replace kmix? Doesn't it work on wayland? I thought the whole KDE ecosystem is moving in that direction.

Besides, I'm actually still using alsamixer to control pipewire. It gets the job done. It did with pure alsa, it does with pipewire, and I think I was using it with jack as well, even though it was more limited.

[gorg86]

@dmpogo
Yes I'd prefer a pure alsa implementation.

@szatox
The problem with kmix is, it has inconsistent behavior in general and it does not work properly on a pure ALSA system.
On an ALSA system it just picks the first sound card and ignores the rest. In this case there is an HDMI device listed first (which I do not use), which makes it useless to me.
In theory I could change the order of devices by blacklisting drivers etc. but even if it worked I'd have to deal with random crashes and restart it from time to time.

So far I've tried volwheel, volumeicon and mixer_app, but they are unmaintained X11 programs that just do not work on a wayland desktop.

EDIT:
Alright, instead of defining my default device in .asoundrc or masking modules I changed the indexes of the devices in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf like this:

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options snd_hda_intel index=1,0 vid=0x1022,0x1002 pid=0x8814,0x8809

like it's described here https://alsa.opensrc.org/MultipleCards

This solution is DIRTY, because alsa still can't distinguish between those 2 devices when the modules are loaded. Whatever it picks up first just gets switched to to index 1 and the second device to index 0. If I put it like this "options snd_hda_intel index=0,1 ...", then nothing changes.

I got the PIDs and VIDs with these commands:

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udevadm info -a /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:07:00.6
udevadm info -a /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:07:00.1

cat /proc/asound/modules:

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 0 snd_hda_intel
 1 snd_hda_intel

cat /proc/asound/cards:

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 0 [Generic_1      ]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
                      HD-Audio Generic at 0xfcc80000 irq 85
 1 [Generic        ]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
                      HD-Audio Generic at 0xfcc88000 irq 84

kmix picks up the right device, but now refuses to select my HDMI device (which I don't need).
I activated the OSD function but it does not work unfortunately.

I'll keep using kmix slop for now, but I'd like to switch to something reliable.
If you know an alternative, please post it.

EDIT 2:
kmix's behavior is the same if I compile pipewire with pipewire-alsa + sound-server.
Apparently it can't connect natively to pipewire at all.

[pietinger]

[...] Alright, instead of defining my default device in .asoundrc [...]

Why not? IMHO it is the easiest solution. I have also a pure alsa solution and KDE and I am happy with KMix (using PCM). I use a global /etc/asound.conf ->

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# cat /etc/asound.conf 
defaults.pcm.card 0
defaults.pcm.device 3
# 
# aplay -l
**** Liste der Hardware-Geräte (PLAYBACK) ****
Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 0: Generic Analog [Generic Analog]
  Sub-Geräte: 1/1
  Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0
Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 1: Generic Digital [Generic Digital]
  Sub-Geräte: 1/1
  Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0
Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 3: HDMI 0 [Acer ET430K]
  Sub-Geräte: 1/1
  Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0
Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Sub-Geräte: 1/1
  Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0
Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
  Sub-Geräte: 1/1
  Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0
Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 9: HDMI 3 [HDMI 3]
  Sub-Geräte: 1/1
  Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0

[gorg86]

Why not? IMHO it is the easiest solution. I have also a pure alsa solution and KDE and I am happy with KMix (using PCM). I use a global /etc/asound.conf ->

kmix ignores the default alsa device defined in .asoundrc, only changing the index numbers worked.
I did not try changing /etc/asound.conf though.
Maybe it's because both devices have the exact same name and use the same driver.
They are 2 completely different components though.

Code: Select all

07:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Renoir/Cezanne HDMI/DP Audio Controller
07:00.6 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 17h/19h/1ah HD Audio Controller

my aplay -l

Code: Select all

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Generic_1 [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: ALC897 Analog [ALC897 Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Generic_1 [HD-Audio Generic], device 1: ALC897 Digital [ALC897 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 7: HDMI 1 [LG TV]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Also, I don't know why lspci tells me that it's supposedly an AMD device, it's the usual Realtek slop you find on every consumer mainboard.

lsmod | grep -i snd

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snd_hda_codec_alc662    16384  1
snd_hda_codec_realtek_lib    57344  1 snd_hda_codec_alc662
snd_hda_codec_generic   122880  2 snd_hda_codec_alc662,snd_hda_codec_realtek_lib
snd_hda_codec_atihdmi    16384  1
snd_hda_codec_hdmi     57344  1 snd_hda_codec_atihdmi
snd_hda_intel          61440  11
snd_hda_codec         196608  6 snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_alc662,snd_hda_codec_realtek_lib,snd_hda_codec_atihdmi
snd_hda_core          135168  7 snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_alc662,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_codec_realtek_lib,snd_hda_codec_atihdmi
snd_intel_dspcfg       45056  1 snd_hda_intel
snd_intel_sdw_acpi     16384  1 snd_intel_dspcfg
snd_hwdep              20480  1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm               188416  7 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_core
snd_timer              49152  4 snd_pcm
snd                   135168  24 snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hwdep,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_realtek_lib,snd_pcm
soundcore              12288  1 snd

[pietinger]

I guess you want use this:

Code: Select all

card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 7: HDMI 1 [LG TV]

Have you ever tried to set in /etc/asound.conf this? ->

Code: Select all

defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.pcm.device 7

(without using a local asound.rc; just delete it; switch in KMix to input PCM)

[gorg86]

Ok, I'm using /etc/asound.conf and deleted .asoundrc, kmix is still broken, still can't see/select my analog sound output.

[steve_v]

This might be old news as I haven't used it in years, but IIRC getting kmix to behave on a pure-ALSA setup required setting KMIX_PULSEAUDIO_DISABLE=1... YMMV, but thought I should mention it as environment variables kmix uses are almost lost information at this point.

[pietinger]

[...] getting kmix to behave on a pure-ALSA setup required setting KMIX_PULSEAUDIO_DISABLE=1 [...]

Good to know ... thanks a lot for this info. Maybe it is not needed if pulseaudio is disabled via Use-flags (I have disabled it).

[gorg86]

@steve_v thanks for that, I had no luck setting that.

I'll try using a soundserver again, the only reason I moved away from Pulseaudio back in the day was, because it created more problems than it solved for me.
After reading the updated wikis, I see that a lot has changed and having libpulse installed for just a few programs won't mess up my sound in all kinds of weird ways.