Home / ubuntu / Questions / 57319
Accepted
wim
Asked: 2011-08-17 05:09:36 +0800 CST

Analog and digital audio output at the same time

  • 772

My speakers use a digital input, but my headphones use an analog input. I have them both plugged in, and when I want to use the headphones I just turn off the speakers and switch on the headphones. I know that simultaneous output on digital and analog is supported by the hardware, because it worked fine in Windows XP. But on Ubuntu, I seem to only get one at a time, depending on which setting is selected in the combo box located at System -> Preferences -> Sound -> Hardware.

How can I get simultaneous analog and digital output without having to switch the profile every time? I'm on Ubuntu 11.04 and it's an HDA Intel chip.

enter image description here

sound

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    We have the optional application paprefs Install paprefs that allows to install a virtual output device to pulseaudio. This enables simultaneous output to all attached sound cards/devices:

    paprefs

    The additionally created audio output device for simultaneous output may be selected in the "Output" tab from pulseaudio sound preferences menu:

    enter image description here

    From the command line we can also load the device for simultaneous output without having to run paprefs by

    pacmd load-module module-combine-sink
# pacmd load-module module-combine # for PulseAudio < 1.0

    Put this line (without pacmd) in your /etc/pulse/default.pa to load this device at startup.

    • 11

  2. The accepted answer doesn't work anymore, at least from ubuntu 16.04 LTS (maybe even more, but I am not sure). What works is the following (tested in ubuntu 17.10): https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio/Examples

    Specifically add the following to your /etc/pulse/default.pa

    ### Load analog device
load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,0
load-module module-combine-sink sink_name=combined
set-default-sink combined
    • 0