Question

155

Play sound through two or more outputs/devices

rated 0 times [ 155] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 183889 / 2 Years ago, fri, april 22, 2022, 4:37:55

I have one sound card and one pair of Bluetooth headphones. I want to play my audio through both my sound card and my Bluetooth headphones.

I believe Windows has checkboxes that allow you to "check" outputs to enable/disable them, but Ubuntu seemingly has the equivalent of radio selectors (you can only select one at a time).

Bonus question:
On a similar note, I have 5 analog output channels on my sound card (in addition to my digital & HDMI audio) -- I would like to be able to determine what comes out of each of those ports (e.g. "front speakers" on all 5 or "front", "center", "back", etc).

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ingssex

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3 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago utschang · Accepted Answer

With paprefs you have access to a virtual output device that enables simultaneous output to all attached sound cards and devices:

sudo apt install paprefs

Then in the terminal run paprefs, select Simultaneous Output tab, and check Add virtual output for simultaneous output on all local sounds cards.

The additionally created audio output device for simultaneous output may be selected in the Output tab from the PulseAudio Sound Preferences menu (pavucontrol):

In this example it is shown for an HDMI-device, but, as soon as your Bluetooth device is recognized, it will also be available for simultaneous output.

The changes may need a restart of PulseAudio to take effect, either by logging out and back in to your session or by running pulseaudio -k in a terminal.

In case paprefs does not do the job or if you prefer to have paprefs not installed, use this command from the command line:

pactl load-module module-combine-sink

To unload the module from the command line and reset PulseAudio to defaults, just restart PulseAudio with:

pulseaudio -k

or issue:

pactl unload-module module-combine-sink