I have an audio interface connected with my computer:
When the interface is not connected, I can’t hear any audio, neither from firefox, nor vlc, nor any other source.
When the interface is connected, I can hear the audio from my DAW only.
I know pipewire is working, this is what I get from systemctl:
user@localhost:~> systemctl --user status pipewire
● pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimedia Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Mon 2026-01-19 15:44:39 GMT; 4h 42min ago
Invocation: 92024dcca98544fb9e1e0a5a5b436540
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire.socket
Main PID: 2412 (pipewire)
Tasks: 3 (limit: 8183)
CPU: 1.683s
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pipewire.service
└─2412 /usr/bin/pipewire
Jan 19 15:44:39 localhost.localdomain systemd[2383]: Started PipeWire Multimedia Service.
I have also tried using coppwr (which I don’t particularly like, and I am open to alternatives) to check how the DAW was connected in the hope to replicate the same linking for all the other applications , but it doesn’t appear in the list.
You may try helvum instead of coppwr and you may look at pw-top to see what is going on (hint: use pw-top -b -n 1 if you need to copy-paste the results here).
Thanks for the suggestion, this is what pw-top gives before connecting the audio interface, i.e. when I have no sound at all:
user@localhost:~> pw-top -b -n 1
S ID QUANT RATE WAIT BUSY W/Q B/Q ERR FORMAT NAME
C 29 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 Dummy-Driver
C 30 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 Freewheel-Driver
C 49 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 Midi-Bridge
C 52 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 bluez_midi.server
C 55 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 alsa_output.pci-0000_04_00.6.pro-output-0
C 56 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 alsa_input.pci-0000_04_00.6.pro-input-0
C 64 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 v4l2_input.pci-0000_04_00.3-usb-0_4_1.0
C 66 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 v4l2_input.pci-0000_04_00.4-usb-0_1_1.0
C 77 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 speech-dispatcher-dummy
and this is the result after having plugged in the audio interface:
S ID QUANT RATE WAIT BUSY W/Q B/Q ERR FORMAT NAME
C 29 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 Dummy-Driver
C 30 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 Freewheel-Driver
C 49 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 Midi-Bridge
C 52 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 bluez_midi.server
C 55 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 alsa_output.pci-0000_04_00.6.pro-output-0
C 56 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 alsa_input.pci-0000_04_00.6.pro-input-0
C 64 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 v4l2_input.pci-0000_04_00.3-usb-0_4_1.0
C 66 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 v4l2_input.pci-0000_04_00.4-usb-0_1_1.0
C 77 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 speech-dispatcher-dummy
C 86 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 alsa_output.usb-BEHRINGER_UMC404HD_192k-00.Direct__Direct__sink
C 88 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 alsa_input.usb-BEHRINGER_UMC404HD_192k-00.Direct__Direct__source
after a lot of messing around, I have managed to make VLC work with the audio interface on, by changing the audio device from “pipewire sink” to the audio interface. This worked because the option was directly available in the VLC interface. Mind you, still no audio from VLC without audio interface.
Still no luck (and no clue!) on how to make applications like Firefox or Amarok work in either mode.
The post suggested enabling DisableAutoSpawn in /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf, which I did. I also noticed that the default option for that was PulseAudio rather than pipewire, so I switched that as well in case I may ever need to use this in the future.
Then a quick reboot worked its magic, and now sound works both with and without using the audio interface. I assume speech-dispatcher-dummy was creating some conflict for me too, similar to what was described in the post above.