Restoring USB audio after KVM switching.

[BlinkRape]

Sorry for the strange title. I'm begrudgingly trying to get myself over to Linux for most things. Attempt (n) of (n) over (n) years. But I have a lot of audio/video stuff, and a huge steam library, so KVM between two boxes is the order of the day for me.

I did not seem to have this problem in Linux Mint XFCE or KDE editions, but for some reason Cinnamon is driving me mad.

1). Audio options are lacking/suck. Dropdowns for some things don't work (selecting input channel mode, etc)
2). I have no way to "turn off" my HDMI audio - which may or may not be contributing to 3. The audio panel in other Mint editions seems to have this feature.
3). I have a USB audio interface (UMC404HD) which I share between both computers over KVM, along with the mouse and keyboard. When I did this with Mint XFCE/KDE all went rather well. upon switching back to the linux box the sound would resume working just like normal. But not on Cinnamon, nope, I guess that would be too easy. Sound defaults back to the HDMI interface.

Is there a more elegant way I can deal with this, other than trying to do blacklisting myself?
I'm not really that perceptive when it comes to installing alternate packages, or rigging things from other desktop environments to work in a different one, etc. So I'm trying not to break my OS by asking for help first.

[BlinkRape]

Managed to fix my own problem for once.

A) It seems it wasn't all sound, just the system sounds getting reset to the HDMI.
B) I just installed pavucontrol on a hunch after reading a thread here, and was able to designate the HDMI audio as "turned off".


Now I don't lose any sounds at all when the USB device disconnects/reconnects.