Question

118

How to change pulseaudio sink with "pacmd set-default-sink" during playback?

rated 0 times [ 118] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 195414 / 3 Years ago, sun, august 29, 2021, 3:55:12

I need to switch the pulseaudio server of a currently playing audio stream.

Pulseaudio server is set up with IP 192.168.1.105

$>cat /etc/pulse/default.pa

...

load-module module-esound-protocol-tcp auth-anonymous=1

load-module module-native-protocol-tcp auth-anonymous=1

load-module module-zeroconf-publish

...

On the source side VLC media player is playing a song.

I created a new tunnel sink with pulseaudio on source side.

pacmd load-module module-tunnel-sink server=192.168.1.105

pacmd set-default-sink 1

But while playing audio the server couldn't be changed immediately. Only after stopping the player and replay, it's ok.

From "gnome-volume-control" or "gnome-control-center sound" switching of output devices is applied immediately.

How can I apply switching the output sink immediately from command line during playback of a sound file?

Answers

Only authorized users can answer the question. Please sign in first, or register a free account.

tionverflow

Add To Favorites

Follow

Total Points: 500

Total Questions: 115

Total Answers: 120

Location: Northern Ireland

Member since Mon, Nov 14, 2022

1 Year ago

tionverflow questions

1 Can you help me install clang-14 on Ubuntu 18.04? I think I need a valid repo as apt-get install clang-14 does not work :(

Mon, Jan 30, 23, 23:53, 1 Year ago

1 How to Change Ubuntu 21.10 GDM background to a Image or to a Color

Wed, Jun 8, 22, 15:06, 2 Years ago

1 No Wi-Fi settings or connection after switching to NVIDIA graphics driver

Fri, Aug 6, 21, 16:05, 3 Years ago

1 how to remove non-latin fonts without auto-removing xubuntu-desktop?

Mon, Sep 13, 21, 01:12, 3 Years ago

1 20.04 - How to completely uninstall iRedMail

Sat, Aug 14, 21, 20:59, 3 Years ago

View All

answered 3 Years ago nnaisdio · Accepted Answer

PulseAudio pacmd is not capable of switching the default sinks while there is an actively playing stream to the sink input. However there is a way to still achieve this.

Changing default sink from command line

First we need to determine the index number of the sinks we want to switch. This can be done by calling:

pacmd list-sinks

Depending on our system this will give you a more or less lengthy list of sinks and properties that are at present accessible:

 >>> 2 sink(s) available.

      * index: 0

            name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_01_00.1.hdmi-stereo-extra1>

            driver: <module-alsa-card.c>

    :

    :

        index: 1

            name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.analog-stereo>

            driver: <module-alsa-card.c>

The index or the name given here is what we need for adressing the sink by command line. The present default sink is marked with an asterix (here 0).

To be able to switch the default sinks from command line we may need to disable stream target device restore by editing the corresponing line in /etc/pulse/default.pa to:

load-module module-stream-restore restore_device=false

To change the default output sink to sink 1 we then run

pacmd set-default-sink 1

Sucess can be visualized by opening the Sound Settings menu.

Moving a stream to another sink

Changing the default sink while we have an active input stream playing to a given sink has no effect. This should rather be done by moving this input to another sink.

pacmd list-sink-inputs

will tell us the index of the input stream

>>> 1 sink input(s) available.

    index: 5

    driver: <protocol-native.c>

We now know that we want to move the input stream 5 to sink 1 by calling

pacmd move-sink-input 5 1

or back to sink 0 if we like. This will be done immediately without the need of stopping playback.

Changing default sink while playing

Of course we can combine those two commands to immediately switch default sinks during playback e.g. with

pacmd set-default-sink 1 & pacmd move-sink-input 5 1

A drawback of this method is that the input stream index changes every time we stop and restart the music player. So we always have to find out the current stream index before we can switch using the commmand line.