Every time I boot up or try to play a file in Amarok, I get the notification "Switching to the audio playback device ... which has a higher preference or is specifically configured for this stream". I don't want that to happen. I want KDE to use the cards as I configured them.



I installed a secondary sound card (an M-Audio Audiophile 192) which shows up as "VT1720/24..." in KDE. I do NOT want to use this card to play notifications, music, etc. I want to use the builtin audio. As you can see in the image above, I have configured the builtin device as top priority in every single category, and yet KDE will not play music through this card. The card is definitely working, as the "Test" button on the configuration page does play audio through it, and VLC always plays its music through this builtin card properly.

Any advice on getting the KDE system to always use this card?

Please check the "Audio Hardware Setup" tab, it should be self-explaining.

Mamarok wrote:Please check the "Audio Hardware Setup" tab, it should be self-explaining.

Already did. Is there something wrong?

Well, you apparently still use the built-in audio. Check again

Mamarok wrote:Well, you apparently still use the built-in audio. Check again

Sorry if I was unclear. I want to use the builtin audio, and not to use the Audiophile192.

Which Distribution, which exact KDE version is this about, and are you using Pulseaudio?

Mamarok wrote:Which Distribution, which exact KDE version is this about, and are you using Pulseaudio?

This is Debian 7.2 (wheezy) with KDE 4.8.4. Indeed I am using pulseaudio.

I got Amarok to work properly by playing a file, then manually setting its sink to the builtin card with pavucontrol. Unfortunately, the knotify sounds are so short I cannot do the same for it.

Aha! Finally tracked down the problem to pulseaudio's module-stream-restore, which is loaded by default at boot to preserve your stream preferences and volumes.

What happened was there used to be a 3rd device through which my sounds were playing. When I removed it, this module automatically reassigned knotify and amarok (and many others, I'm sure) to the Audiophile192 sink rather than the builtin card. After that, the module just kept using the Audiophile192, regardless of the KDE/Phonon preferences.

Since I did not find a single other instance of this happening, here is the fix: to reset the module-stream-restore, you must delete

Code: Select all

~/.pulse/*stream-volumes*

. After I did that, everything worked as expected, obeying my KDE/Phonon preferences.

By the way, the "Revert back to device..." button in the picture in the first post doesn't work.

I think it works now, and that since quite a while. Your KDE is not the latest release, current is 4.12.x

In order for Pulseaudio to respect KDE preferences, the module "module-device-manager" must be loaded with the parameters "do_routing=1".

bcooksley wrote:In order for Pulseaudio to respect KDE preferences, the module "module-device-manager" must be loaded with the parameters "do_routing=1".

Cool, thanks! On Debian wheezy, this module is not loaded by /etc/pulse/default.pa. I am updating to KDE 4.11 and Debian jessie shortly, and hopefully it's fixed there.