Default ALSA sound device setting ignored

[Pekka]

Upon updating a Debian Sid amd64 machine to use Plasma 5 desktop VLC 2.2.1 (installed from Debian repositories) keeps changing the ALSA sound device to whatever is on the bottom of the "Audio -> Audio Device" menu on each start. This happens regardless of what is set under "Device" in the "Output" section of "Audio Settings" in preferences. Once the correct audio device is set manually in the "Audio -> Audio Device" menu it stays that way until VLC is restarted. I suspect this has something to do with KDE4 -> Plasma 5 transition as the same version of VLC worked as expected in KDE4 on the same machine and still does on another similar one with KDE4.
My /etc/asound.conf contains this:

Code: Select all

defaults.pcm.card 0 defaults.pcm.device 3 defaults.ctl.card 0 defaults.ctl.device 3

in order to set the default audio output to HDMI port of the Intel HDA onboard card. Blacklisting/swapping and changing alsa devices does not seem to have any effect on this VLC behaviour. All other applications outputting sound to the default ALSA device work OK. I do not have Pulseaudio installed and I do not wish to install it.

[gvb]

I can confirm that the problem exactly as described is still there. Ubuntu 15.04 with KDE/Plasma 5 did not present the problem. An upgrade to Ubuntu 15.10 with KDE/Plasma 5 now presents this behaviour.

The desired audio device is correctly set in the configuration file by making the choice in the preferences dialog. I also tried to invoke vlc from the command line specifying the desired audio device. I can see that VLC understands the choice when started. However, when the media is started, that device is not chosen, but rather the last one in the list.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

That bug was already fixed some time ago.

[purevw]

That bug was already fixed some time ago.

Apparently not. I upgraded to openSUSE 42.1 and the bug exists. I reported this on the openSUSE forums. I have had over 200 views and not a single suggestion, so I will copy the text of my openSUSE post here.

First off, I should state that I do not use pulse audio. I have never been satisfied with it's performance concerning surround sound and other high quality audio. I run alsa, which uses the snd-virtuoso driver for my Xonar DS card. All other system sounds seem to work correctly.

Ever since I did a fresh install of openSUSE 42.1, VLC exhibits very strange behavior concerning sound. In settings, I choose Alsa for sound and under device, it gives me more than a dozen options for my Xonar DS card, such as 5.1, 7.1, Xonar DS default audio device, etc.. Regardless of which I choose and save, when I open VLC and open a file, I get just a fraction of a second of sound and then silence. When I use the menu to select the audio device, it has changed it's self to Xonar DS, Multichannel IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output, which is the last device on the list.

I am able to manually change it to the card I chose in setting via the menus and restore sound, but this happens every time I open VLC. If I keep the interface open and open other files, the settings seem to remain intact. Deleting the VLC settings in my home folder seems to have no effect. This seems to be unique to VLC. SMPlayer and all others seem to work correctly.

I should have mentioned that I don't have S/PDIF capability on my system, so I get no sound when VLC reverts to it each time. I do not have "use s/pdif" enabled in my settings

There are also other issues that concern VLC when run against QT version 5 that produces two windows regardless of settings, but am not knowledgeable enough to know if there is a relationship.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

I don't know if the bug is fixed in OpenSUSE. It's definitely fixed upstream.

As for windowing, that's a known OpenSUSE package bug.

[purevw]

I get VLC via the packman repository that openSUSE lists. I guess I'll wait until the update reaches there.

openSUSE is aware of the QT5 problems and are working on it. The bug is widely reported there.

Thanks for the update. It's much more than I knew before.

[purevw]

I changed to the git version of vlc-beta 3.0 from the openSUSE repository. The sound problem is fixed as well as the two window problem. The build in question has been designed to regress to QT4 for now. There were window resizing problems the last time I tried vlc-beta, but those issues have now been addressed also.

[jeremy_murphy]

Is this the correct issue in question? https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/12756
If not, could someone post a link to it please?
Thanks, cheers.

[purevw]

It may well be the correct issue. I had to go from vlc-beta 3 back to vlc 2.2.1 from packman for openSUSE and the issue still exists. The last post from your link suggests that someone backport the fix to 2.2.2 and hopefully I'll get an upgrade offered from packman soon. Thanks for that link.