How to detect 3.5mm headphones ? [SOLVED]

[RIA77]

Hello,
I have three different configurations and two headphones.
One of them are USB, Plantronics. Plantronics works like charm.

I have problem with other 3.5mm headphones.

They are working in laptop, but not in desktop machine.
In desktop there is no headphones option (tried with alsamixer).
What do I need to turn on in kernel so headphones will work ?

Log from Artix, laptop (headphones is working):

[NeddySeagoon]

RIA77,

Desktops vary. Maybe you don't detect the headphone jack.

Some systems have the headphone jack wired with the front stereo output (green output). When there is a jack in the headphone socket, the speaker output is switched off by a mechanical switch in the headphone jack socket.

You use the same controls for both.
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
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[Ralphred]

You should check out hdajackretask (it's part of media-sound/alsa-tools).

I use jackd directly above alsa, so my "headphone wizardry" is done there. That said my .asoundrc foo isn't totally useless and you should be able to create a "headphones" pcm that maps onto the correct pins.
I had a software switch that was "switching" between "rear audio outputs" and "front headphone" output on 3.5mm jack insertion that I had to "switch off" with hdajackretask to get the behaviour I wanted (both on all the time as a selectable outputs in kmix); hdajackretask was essential is sorting this out as it knew more about my sound card/chip than the kernel did, and opened the door. That door lead to to being able to read the right bit of the kernel documentation and have the correct kernel commandline options in grub to enable "all the functionality" at boot.

I digress: Check out hdajackretask, it may have the tickbox you want to make things work, if it doesn't it'll still provide information to help looking deeper.

[szatox]

I on the other hand don't think it's an issue with headphone jack at all.
My guess is that your system is just sending audio to HDMI instead. It's probably the typical problem with speakers connected to analog audio device while digital is indexed with 0, which makes it the default playback device.


You can edit aosound config file to change the default playback device, you can reorder devices to make analog indexed at 0, or you can add pipewire to your audio stack and flag analog as the default output using its interface.
If you have (and want to use) multiple audio devices, pipewire might be the most convenient way; for a static setup reordering indexes was the easiest trick, as it only took 1 or 2 short lines in some config file, but I don't remember details anymore, so hopefully someone else can dig up a link. I mean, pipewire still does work for a static setup, so you might as well go this route
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[RIA77]

Thank you all. Just plugged in directly in soundcard.
Maybe front is not working.