Sound outputs missing after running Ardour

beanhop · December 3, 2025, 10:26pm

Hi all,
I’ve searched high and low…

Time came to upgrade from debian 12 to 13 (Trixie / stable). After this my three sound outputs all worked:

optical out to hifi amp,
usb out to digital audio interface, and
hdmi/displayport out to display monitor’s speakers.

Then I installed Ardour
[Ardour 8.12.0~ds “Sonora Portraits” (rev 8.12.0~ds-1) Intel 64-bit]
…and opened a past project. I understand little of linux sound systems, but in the past I just used alsa settings without jack and it worked. This time I’ve read that Trixie defaults to using pipewire to connect everything up. On starting ardour I still chose the alsa options as I haven’t installed any jack stuff, and from what I can see there is no pipewire-jack or the like in my system. I mention that because jack/pipewire shows up in Ardour start options, even though it doesn’t work at all. So with alsa selected I was able to hear sound monitored externally on all of the three devices I have. All seemed well, but I noticed an odd thing early on…

Whenever I stopped and then started the Audio/Midi setup in Ardour to connect to a different output, the (non-Ardour) gnome sound settings GUI didn’t always display the matching output labels. Worse was to come…

When I closed Ardour altogether, my gnome sound settings got stuck on the USB audio interface, with no other output in sight. Reboots didn’t help, nor did restarting pipewire and wireplumber. I couldn’t use the other output devices any more. To be clear I’m not trying to use different outputs while using Ardour, I just want to be able to use different outputs once Ardour is closed.

I tried all sorts to no avail. Eventually I reinstalled the operating system, and sound worked as it should. I installed Ardour on top, ran it, and the same problem re-occurred. Only one sound output (usb) is now available after running Ardour. To be precise I can stick a 1/4 inch jack into the back of the computer and still get analogue sound out, but that’s not an output I wanted to use. Obviously reinstalling the OS after running Ardour each time isn’t practical.

Most search hits I found relate to pre-pipewire / pre-trixie setups so I’m not surprised they haven’t helped. There’s one item on this forum that talks of ‘killing’ Jack, which to my knowledge I don’'t have. Everything I’ve read about sound on trixie seems to imply it should just work without the extra effort that previous Debian versions needed. So not sure what more I can do.

Hoping this is a helpful clue, I get:

~$ aplay -l
 List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices 
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC897 Analog [ALC897 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: ALC897 Digital [ALC897 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [PL3493WQ]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 9: HDMI 3 [HDMI 3]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: U192k [UMC204HD 192k], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

I presume the above devices should not all have the same card and subdevice number!

So I’m wondering, is there some simple command I can use to make gnome get a grip again on all the hardware outputs after running Ardour?

ccaudle · December 3, 2025, 11:55pm

All the PCH devices are card 0, and have different device numbers.
The usb device is card 1, device 0.
Nothing looks unexpected there.

Check what pavucontrol shows the settings to be after Ardour stops.

beanhop · December 4, 2025, 11:32am

pavucontrol under the configuration tab offers:

the usb audio interface UMC204HD 192k, and
Built-in Audio “off” with drop down options
- Stereo out + in (unplugged) unavailable
- Stereo output (unplugged) unavailable
- Stereo input (unplugged) unavailable
- Pro Audio
- off
  Pro audio is selectable but doesn’t seem to help connect to the outputs I want in any way

In case it helps: alsamixer shows Card and chip to be Pipewire. F6 “select sound card” offers:

default 0 HDA Intel PCH
default 1 UMC204HD 192k
However attempting to select one of these exits with the comment “cannot load mixer controls: No such file or directory”

ccaudle · December 5, 2025, 12:05am

What version of pipewire and wireplumber does Debian 13 provide? This seems like something wrong with the sound server configuration.
I don’t normally associate Debian stable with being super timely, but I saw somewhere that Trixie provides pipewire 1.4.9 now. Is that accurate? That is the latest tagged version of 1.4.x and is what Fedora currently provides, so should be both reasonably recent and stable.

x42 · December 5, 2025, 12:27am

pipewire 1.4.2-1 (Debian -- Package Search Results -- pipewire)

On my debian/trixie system this I don’t have this issue though.

When I start Ardour/ALSA pipewire (using the onboard HDA Intel PCH), desktop sound stops, and when Ardour is closed, sound resumes…

I’m not using gnome (mate-desktop here), but I doubt that makes a difference.

That is pulseaudio. Likely the issue is at a lower level. Debian saves/restores hardware mixer levels (alsamixer) which may be muted.

Wow.

How can Ardour even use those soundcards in the first place

Do you use Debian’s default kernel? Is there anything in dmesg?

beanhop · December 5, 2025, 11:39am

pipewire 1.4.2-1 amd64
wireplumber 0.5.8-2 amd64
ardour 1:8.12.0+ds-1 amd64

I don’t knowingly alter the kernel.

In summary here’s what I know I do:

install OS
apt-get update etc
alter /etc/crypttab and /etc/fstab
restore user’s files from backup into /home storage area with rsync opts -auv
alter umask for user to “UMask=0077”
chmod same restricted permissions throughout user’s /home storage area
install list of user-preferred applications from default repos
install proprietary google chrome using their repos - gets added to apt sources
restore printer settings in /etc/cups from backup
restore gnome user pref using dconf load from backup
apt sources: modernize, remove source code, target trixie, trixie-updates, trixie-security: all to min, non-free-firmware
The last of these brought in intel-microcode (3.20250812.1~deb13u1
Set nftables firewall
Set croncode schedules for updates and backups

I’m pretty clueless about dmesg, but had a go:

# dmesg | grep -i hda
[   71.339975] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1f.3: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[   71.340144] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1f.3: bound 0000:00:02.0 (ops i915_audio_component_bind_ops [i915])
[   71.418557] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC1D0: autoconfig for ALC897: line_outs=1 (0x14/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0) type:line
[   71.418563] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC1D0:    speaker_outs=0 (0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)
[   71.418564] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC1D0:    hp_outs=1 (0x1b/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)
[   71.418565] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC1D0:    mono: mono_out=0x0
[   71.418566] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC1D0:    dig-out=0x1e/0x0
[   71.418566] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC1D0:    inputs:
[   71.418567] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC1D0:      Rear Mic=0x18
[   71.418568] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC1D0:      Front Mic=0x19
[   71.463578] input: HDA Intel PCH Rear Mic as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.3/sound/card1/input13
[   71.463604] input: HDA Intel PCH Front Mic as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.3/sound/card1/input14
[   71.463622] input: HDA Intel PCH Line Out as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.3/sound/card1/input15
[   71.463640] input: HDA Intel PCH Front Headphone as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.3/sound/card1/input16
[   71.463657] input: HDA Intel PCH HDMI/DP,pcm=3 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.3/sound/card1/input17
[   71.463677] input: HDA Intel PCH HDMI/DP,pcm=7 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.3/sound/card1/input18
[   71.463694] input: HDA Intel PCH HDMI/DP,pcm=8 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.3/sound/card1/input19
[   71.463711] input: HDA Intel PCH HDMI/DP,pcm=9 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.3/sound/card1/input20


# dmesg -l warn
[    0.078937]   #1  #3  #5  #7  #9 #11 #13 #15
[    0.245123] pnp 00:03: disabling [mem 0xc0000000-0xcfffffff] because it overlaps 0000:00:02.0 BAR 9 [mem 0x00000000-0xdfffffff 64bit pref]
[    0.607599] ENERGY_PERF_BIAS: Set to 'normal', was 'performance'
[    0.886364] igc 0000:02:00.0: can't disable ASPM; OS doesn't have ASPM control
[    4.333499] device-mapper: core: CONFIG_IMA_DISABLE_HTABLE is disabled. Duplicate IMA measurements will not be recorded in the IMA log.
[   76.226712] nvme nvme0: using unchecked data buffer
[   98.382759] show_signal: 117 callbacks suppressed
[  104.407303] warning: `conky' uses wireless extensions which will stop working for Wi-Fi 7 hardware; use nl80211
[  164.131242] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: WARN: buffer overrun event for slot 2 ep 4 on endpoint
[  164.131359] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: WARN: buffer overrun event for slot 2 ep 4 on endpoint
[  164.131483] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: WARN: buffer overrun event for slot 2 ep 4 on endpoint
[  164.131608] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: WARN: buffer overrun event for slot 2 ep 4 on endpoint
[  164.131733] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: WARN: buffer overrun event for slot 2 ep 4 on endpoint
[  164.131860] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: WARN: buffer overrun event for slot 2 ep 4 on endpoint
[  164.131981] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: WARN: buffer overrun event for slot 2 ep 4 on endpoint
[  164.132109] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: WARN: buffer overrun event for slot 2 ep 4 on endpoint

I tried Ardour on my machine using a live version of gnome trixie, it did hand back control to gnome, but of course I couldn’t update all the software first nor see if it still worked after a reboot. I noticed the problems on the installed version after a reboot following running ardour so can’t be sure when it locked out my access to the internal HDA / HDMI audio.

Just my impression, and again beyond my proper understanding, but it seems to me that Ardour somehow activates pipewire et al (leveraging alsa?) to list / locate outputs/sinks to make them available for the user to choose from. This is in the start button in the audio / midi settings window. And the stop button stops everything. Perhaps the stop is clearing some sinks from pipewire’s dynamically created sinks/nodes?