Conram thanks for your example. I note you are using hw:1,7 as the HDMI device. I assume (correctly ? ) that you determined that by running:
aplay -l
which listed your devices as seen by the alsa driver, and you noted that Card 1: Device 7: (or sub-device-7) was your HDMI device ?
Hi oldcpu,
Yes, you are right. Thanks for doing the follow-up on my post.
Trying the latter suggestions did not work for me, since I was unable to correctly guess the exact device names required in those commands. I tried the various list-… commands in pacmd, but they give too much information for me. Also, trying out was tedious, since giving a wrong device name actually crashed pulse audio, i.e. all audio stopped, pacmd did not respond even upon restarting and so I always had to reboot to get any kind of audio again.
So how do I figure out the exact device name?
I eventually tried this possibility here, but it does not work either:
pacmd
load-module module-null-sink sink_name=twospeakers
load-module module-loopback sink=twospeakers
It works in so far as I do see a loopback device appearing in the output devices and playback tabs of pavucontrol (exactly like shown in your pictures), but it always remains silent regardless of my selections (the meter shows no activity despite the device not being muted).
> cat /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf
options snd slots=snd-hda-intel,snd-hda-intel,snd-usb-audio
# u1Nb.7rLjTTKOegF:5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
# NXNs.dGSP21z+zg5:nVidia Corporation
alias snd-card-1 snd-hda-intel
# vJb5.nry5KL7dMrE:USB Audio DAC
alias snd-card-2 snd-usb-audio
The USB-Sound device is missing (it was already plugged in before booting)! pavucontrol lists 4 devices in the configuration tab right now, but the above list only contains three.
The first above are the built-in speakers/headphones, the second is HDMI (doesn’t work, deactivated in pavucontrol), the third (“USB Audio DAC”) are the external monitor’s speakers (also deactivated in pavucontrol). The fourth device listed in pavucontrol “USB Headset” is definitely missing here. (There is no confusion between “USB Audio DAC” and “USB Headset”, since both devices can be activated in pavucontrol and work fine on their own.)
BTW, I don’t believe that one anymore:
Thanks a lot for all this extensive help!
Ok, I was suspicious one would not see the USB headphone in the /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf and indeed that is the case, albeit your setup is more complex than I initially realized.
Hmmm … comparing that to the earlier script:
!!Soundcards recognised by ALSA
!!-----------------------------
0 [Intel ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel
HDA Intel at 0xe9660000 irq 43
1 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xe3080000 irq 16
2 [Headset ]: USB-Audio - Logitech USB Headset
Logitech Logitech USB Headset at usb-0000:00:1d.0-1.3, full speed
3 [default ]: USB-Audio - USB Audio DAC
Burr-Brown from TI USB Audio DAC at usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.2.1.3,
I see in addition to motherboard audio, you have 2 USB audio devices. Thats a bit unusual and that is IMHO what complicates this.
I did find pulse is very good, but it can be confusing. I had to play with it a bit (taking notes to record what I tried previous to avoid repetition) before I could sort out my own setup.
I suppose you could try this cat /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf hack :
options snd slots=snd-hda-intel,snd-hda-intel,snd-usb-audio**,snd-usb-audio**
# u1Nb.7rLjTTKOegF:5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
# NXNs.dGSP21z+zg5:nVidia Corporation
alias snd-card-1 snd-hda-intel
# vJb5.nry5KL7dMrE:USB Audio DAC
alias snd-card-2 snd-usb-audio
# oldcpu suggestion for headphones
**alias snd-card-3 snd-usb-audio**
Warning Will Robinson ! That is rather wild speculative hack attempt of mine.
If the above does now work, restore the file back to its original state. DO NOT KEEP BACKUP files in /etc/modprobe.d/ directory. Keep the backups somewhere else.
I edited /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf as suggested, but I did not notice any difference at all.
I still don’t see any effect from the Simultaneous option in paprefs; and the series of commands in pacmd still add a nonfunctional loopback device. 
I am NOT a pulse audio expert, but I had thought paprefs was depreciated (although maybe I am confused and maybe it was ‘padevchooser’ that was depreciated). Still I am a bit puzzled why you prefer to use that other than pavucontrol. …
anyway, its a mute point. If it does not work then it does not work.
I believe paprefs has similar current status to pavucontrol. However, padevchooser is “obsolete or out-of-date”. 
:?
I am not preferring it, I use both, since they offer completly disjunct configuration options. I am just clutching a straws and try all possible options in pavucontrol and paprefs, in order to not miss a thing accidentally.
I find it confusing that these are separate tools in the first place! I would expect the options in paprefs to be accessible through a submenu in pavucontrol, but somehow it is all split up. Seems like a strange choice to me, but that’s the way it is.
The reason why I am still looking at the paprefs tool is that activating the single option in the simultaneous output tab did exactly what I want on another machine. So I wondered whether there altered conf files might give the correct behaviour now. It did not.
STurtle, where do we stand now ?
Have you made any progress?
Did you try conram’s suggestion ?
ie remove any changes you did based on what I suggested, and then try editing the /etc/pulse/default.pa adding this :
### Load USB headphone device
load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:2,0
load-module module-combine sink_name=combined
set-default-sink combined
and then restart and test ?
I assume your USB Headphones are hw:2,0 based on this from the diagnostic script:
!!Aplay/Arecord output
!!------------
APLAY
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: STAC92xx Analog [STAC92xx Analog]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
**card 2: Headset [Logitech USB Headset], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]**
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 3: default [USB Audio DAC ], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
then go into pulse audio and see if you have better selections available.
Yes! :good:
Sorry for the late reply, but I am currently travelling a lot and thus I am not often online and ready to experiment.
I did not try conram’s suggestion, since I did not understand it, but I was in the process of trying it out today, thanks to your last post explaining how to determine hw:2,0. However, pinpointing me to /etc/pulse/default.pa and googling more about the info given in the comments within this configuration file then yielded the following solution today, although I have to do it again after every boot.
Solution:
> pacmd
>>> load-module module-combine
That’s it. Loading this module gives me the combined output options as well as the virtual devices - exactly like you described, like I saw under Kubuntu and like I need.
I found out that the “Simultaneous Output” checkbox option in paprefs should just load this module, and so I tried to load it manually. Apparently all the settings in paprefs are entirely ignored for me (probably a KDE-Pulse-Suse11.4 feature).
Question (rhetorical, since I am just trying out the three possible options anyway)
Adding the above load-module instruction to either /etc/pulse/default.pa or /etc/pulse/system.pa (depending on which one happens to be used by default in my 11.4-KDE-pulse installation) should make this permanent, right?
Or I could add to a startup script something like
pulseaudio -load="module-combine"
IMHO its great news this is working, and also IMHO it may be worth writing a bug report on openSUSE, noting your solution, and asking why this is not the default option ? Guidance for bug reports is here: openSUSE:Submitting bug reports - openSUSE I recommend you raise the bug report on openSUSE-11.4 component “sound”. You can use your openSUSE forum username and password when loggin on to bugzilla.
Yes, that is my understanding, but I am no expert on pulse, with my just learning like you.
Thats an interesting approach. I confess that had not occured to me. I don’t know if that would work. One would need to try from a terminal first to see if it has an effect.
I tried that on my rather ancient sandbox PC (an old athlon-1100) which has two sound devices, … the motherboard sound and an old ancient PCI sound card.
It works as you described in this case also. Very nice.
I did possibly stumble across one intermittent side affect, which is while ‘pacmd’ is running with that “load-module module-combine” in place that ‘arecord’ does not always work properly. But it does sometimes (work properly) and I have not yet figured out the ‘cause and effect’ to see why arecord works sometimes and not at other times.
I filed a bug report for paprefs now.
I don’t think that filing a wishlist bug report for changing the default pulse audio settings has any chance of success, as default settings are a difficult thing to discuss and I am not an expert anyway.
For myself, adding “load-module module-combine” to /etc/pulse/default.pa made the simultaneous device option permanent.
It works fine with all my varying audio configurations - actually I am using internal analog audio, three different USB headsets and a bluetooth headset, all depending on where me and laptop happen to be, but I tried to keep things simple above, always testing with the same devices in the same location.
Thanks for all the help! I will experiment with adding extra sinks as well, to deal with other minor things that I would like.
On Tue, 28 Jun 2011 08:06:03 GMT, STurtle
<STurtle@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
>I filed a ‘bug report for paprefs’
>(http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=702549) now.
>
>I don’t think that filing a wishlist bug report for changing the
>default pulse audio settings has any chance of success, as default
>settings are a difficult thing to discuss and I am not an expert
>anyway.
>
>For myself, adding “load-module module-combine” to
>/etc/pulse/default.pa made the simultaneous device option permanent.
>
>It works fine with all my varying audio configurations - actually I am
>using internal analog audio, three different USB headsets and a
>bluetooth headset, all depending on where me and laptop happen to be,
>but I tried to keep things simple above, always testing with the same
>devices in the same location.
>
>Thanks for all the help! I will experiment with adding extra sinks as
>well, to deal with other minor things that I would like.
Thranx, this may be of help to me as well.