I've done some google and it seems the only way to get simultaneous output to two devices is to use pulse audio, but the only time I tried to use pulse with KDE, it failed miserably. I don't want to reinstall again

I've not found a way to quickly switch between 2 of the 20 some audio devices to pick from. I saw there was at least some attempt to build a plasma widget script, but it didn't seem possible to access this functionality in phonon.

It would be good if there were some way to switch between my HDMI output and headphones without windows, a tab, and a huge drop down with lists of extremely similar and in fact, some identical devices.

I've fallen in love with KDE. It seems to be a terribly good desktop with the usability of windows 7, but far more functionality and amazing integration.

It is actually possible to setup ALSA to output to two device simultaneously - but this requires manual tweaking of ~/.asoundrc and may not be 100% reliable with all applications (due to the way they interact with ALSA).

Having 20 something devices is quite unusual - can you post a list of what it is listing for you?
Also, you should be able to switch audio streams between preferred devices using KMix (at least when Pulseaudio is in use).

bcooksley wrote:It is actually possible to setup ALSA to output to two device simultaneously - but this requires manual tweaking of ~/.asoundrc and may not be 100% reliable with all applications (due to the way they interact with ALSA).

Having 20 something devices is quite unusual - can you post a list of what it is listing for you?
Also, you should be able to switch audio streams between preferred devices using KMix (at least when Pulseaudio is in use).

I've read repeatedly not to use pulse audio with KDE because it breaks things. I had it break my HDMI output last time and I ended up having to reinstall kubuntu to unbreak.

It lists every DVI monitor I have as an HDMI monitor. Making it hard to pick the real HDMI sometimes. Plus it lists all the audio on my intel integrated audio devices. About 18 in all on a quick count.

I CAN use kmix/phonon to switch between different devices, however I have to rightclick the kmix notification applet, click audio setup, click audio hardware setup, scroll and hunt the device, click the device, and click ok to get rid of the window.

It would be much nicer to right click a single applet (new audio switcher applet) and select the device from your prefiltered list of devices. Perhaps this would be a good feature for kmix itself to avoid another applet?

Either that or the ability to enable output to multiple devices at once using kmix so people with headphones don't have to jump through hoops to hunt devices when they want to put on headphones because their wife wants to change the TV (hdmi audio) over to watch General Hospital. Soap operas are torture enough!!!

chisleu wrote:I've read repeatedly not to use pulse audio with KDE because it breaks things. I had it break my HDMI output last time and I ended up having to reinstall kubuntu to unbreak.

That might have been true 3 years ago, since then a lot of work was put into it, and I use Kubuntu 13.04 without any such problems.

Using a Lenovo X220 I don't see that many devices listed, just one integrated audio device. Of course, if you remove pulseaudio on Kubuntu then you will certainly run into problems.

Mamarok wrote:

chisleu wrote:I've read repeatedly not to use pulse audio with KDE because it breaks things. I had it break my HDMI output last time and I ended up having to reinstall kubuntu to unbreak.

That might have been true 3 years ago, since then a lot of work was put into it, and I use Kubuntu 13.04 without any such problems.

Using a Lenovo X220 I don't see that many devices listed, just one integrated audio device. Of course, if you reemove pulseaudio on Kubuntu then you will certainly run into problems.

When I said "devices" I meant profiles. These profiles are listings of each audio output "device" such as my HDMI monitor, HDMI monitor with analog input, my DVI monitors (which show up as HDMI for some reason although they have no audio stream capability that I know of... perhaps because the system supports DVI-D?)

It seems kubuntu does install pulse audio by default now. Interesting. When I installed pavucontrol everything in Kmix changed and I lost the ability to select certain devices(profiles). It also added new ones that didn't work, and every time it started it asked to remove them. I couldn't get my HDMI audio back to working (intel integrated audio) so I reinstalled.

There should be an easy way in KDE to accomplish such an easy task. People smarter than me who tried to make widgets have failed saying there wasn't an interface to change the device profile. Maybe they were wrong, but there should be a way to do this without wading through all the profiles.

In case of problems such as that one, I generally first try under a new user. If it works there, and you are using Pulseaudio, then wiping ~/.pulse* is probably a good place to start.

There should be a simple way to multiplex through phonon/kmix

This is not practical because:
1) Phonon is not directly responsible for interacting with audio devices - this is done by the backend itself (GStreamer, VLC, etc).
2) It is not possible to control applications which do not use Phonon - which you can do with Pulseaudio.

Hello.
I've noticed that Kubuntu users should use "paprefs" to enable simultaneous audio outputs with Pulseaudio. Then is possible to select simultaneous output from KMix and systemsettings audio module.
It would be great to be able to do what "paprefs" does from KDE systemsettings audio module.