[Solved] HDMI sound going to sleep

Forum rules
Before you post read how to get help. Topics in this forum are automatically closed 6 months after creation.
Locked
MatthewDBA

[Solved] HDMI sound going to sleep

Post by MatthewDBA »

Linux Mint 19.2. Fresh installation. I've noticed that it takes about a second for sound to start working when playing a sound/video etc. Particularly irritating when starting to watch a YouTube video and missing the first second of audio. This only seems to be a problem with HDMI audio - using the headphone jack doesn't display this issue.

I've solved this now through some iterative Googling but since it was frustrating me so much I wanted to post it here for people to find in the future.

Running "pacmd list-sinks" showed my HDMI output device in state "SUSPEND" with reason as "IDLE". It goes into this state after only a few seconds of no audio. Thanks to this old post I commented out the following line in /etc/pulse/default.pa -

Code: Select all

### Automatically suspend sinks/sources that become idle for too long
#load-module module-suspend-on-idle
I then rebooted and now the audio device does not go into SUSPEND and I don't get any delay when initiating audio!
Last edited by SMG on Thu Nov 10, 2022 4:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Locking old topic.
jasoncarlson
Level 1
Level 1
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2022 3:57 pm

Re: [Solved] HDMI sound going to sleep

Post by jasoncarlson »

Thanks for posting this. First search result on Google and it seems to have fixed my issue. I initially had issues because there was a criticial firmware update to my notebooks USB-C (how I connect to my monitor/sound) where my audio volume would randomly change volume or disappear. Firmware fixed that but it seemed like if I wasn't playing audio I was missing notifications. I suspected it was going to sleep and found this solution. Thanks again for taking the time to post it.
Locked

Return to “Sound”