Headphones muted after start of the system and/or plugging in

[renergy]

Hi. This occurs to me now after recent update: to have the headphones playing, line out has to be unmuted. But the line out gets muted automatically whenever I plug in the headphones. It is also muted after the start of the system, when headphones are already plugged in. So I get no sound after start of the system and also after plugging in the headphones. After unmuting the line out manually, there is sound without issues.

It's strange line out has to be unmuted - headphones are not line out. And it's inconvenient to have it to unmute every time I start the system or plug the headphones in.

I tried googling the issue to no avail, the advice being to switch off the "Auto-Mute" feature, but it is disabled in my case.

The soundcard is HDA Intel PCH, chip: Realtek ALC255.

[flexibeast]

Could you please tell us what system you're using for sound? PipeWire+WirePlumber (PW+WP), pure ALSA, something else? And if you're using PW+WP, does your system use OpenRC or systemd?

[renergy]

I'm using PipeWire+WirePlumber (PW+WP) with systemd.

[renergy]

I found the following: right after bootup, if I only run "alsamixer", I see the line out unmuted. But if I start firefox and go to youtube, then the lineout gets muted (and, with it, there is no sound in the headphones). Weird, right...

edit: tried another sound application (Extended Module Player, xmp) and its start too leads to lineout muting, so it's not only firefox.

edit2: BUT the lineout muting occurs only on the first start after bootup.

[flexibeast]

This could potentially be the result of ALSA using the contents of /var/lib/alsa/asound.state at startup, before PW+WP have been started. WirePlumber performs session management functionality that includes saving and restoring configuration state, and ALSA's state might somehow have got out of sync with WP's state. (In general, when using PW+WP, you should let PW+WP configure and manage ALSA, rather than futzing with ALSA directly.)

What happens if you temporarily move the asound.state file to some other location (e.g. your home directory)? Does the issue persist?

Finally, if you'd like a TUI mixer app for WirePlumber, there's Wiremix.