Headset not listed in audio devices but in `usb-devices`

Hey all,
I’m running linux-lts with KDE.
After updating this morning, my headset (Astro A50 Gen 4) isn’t listed in the Audio Devices anymore. However, running usb-devices shows it and when passing it through to a VM (Win 10), it works just fine and is detected by the Astro Command Center.

I’ve tried this on 3 different machines, first off my main PC (EOS) -> Didn’t work, then my laptop (T430, also EOS) -> Didn’t work, then a Windows 10 laptop, where the headset again was detected just fine and worked right away.

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So I’ve answered this before for another user, and I know it’s not going to be extremely helpful but maybe someone who knows the specific action can also chime in. I have a Corsair Void Pro Wireless headset that would not work on either EOS nor on my Arch systems. I cannot for the life of me remember the specific actions I took to make them work, but I know I found the information I needed from https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio & https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio/Troubleshooting I really want to apologize as I’m really not a RTFM type of person and I don’t like just providing links to the ArchWiki to answer questions, if someone else who knows the specific steps perhaps they will be able to respond as well.

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that not a RTFM… Your answer straight to point and very helpful :+1: sometime link help more as info^ is clear and better than you can explain…

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I don’t think that’s the issue here, the device is entirely not shown as a “sink” in Pulseaudio. pacmd list-sinks|egrep -i 'index:|name:' only lists my two monitors (that both show up in the devices list), not the headset.

Just to sum up: I have the latest updates installed, am on linux-lts (but the same thing also happens on linux). Done some more digging, the headset is detected just fine when booting up:

Output of dmesg
[    2.991753] usb 1-1.3: New USB device found, idVendor=9886, idProduct=002c, bcdDevice= 0.00
[    2.991755] usb 1-1.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[    2.991757] usb 1-1.3: Product: Astro A50
[    2.991758] usb 1-1.3: Manufacturer: Astro Gaming
[    3.034086] hid-generic 0003:9886:002C.0002: hiddev1,hidraw1: USB HID v1.00 Device [Astro Gaming Astro A50] on usb-0000:01:00.0-1.3/input6

It is also detected right now:

usb-devices | grep 'Product'
...
S:  Product=Astro A50`
...

It’s however not listed in Pulseaudio (the two devices there are my monitors):

pacmd list-sinks | egrep -i 'index:|name:'
    index: 0
        name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_08_00.1.hdmi-stereo-extra3>
  * index: 1
        name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_0a_00.3.iec958-stereo>

EDIT: I can see the device in alsamixer, however, it says that “This sound device does not have any controls.”

My theory: On Windows, the headset has two output channels: A50 Game and A50 Voice (you’re ment to set your game to play through game and chatting software (Discord, TS, Skype) through Voice). On Linux, it was always just shown as one thing (Astro A50 Analog Stereo or something along the lines). My guess would be that in the latest kernel update, something got added that now detects those two channels (making the old device disappear), but doesn’t show them for some reason.

EDIT 2: I’ve also completely wiped my pulseaudio config (~/.config/pulse/) now (and copied a fresh one from /etc/pulse/), just to rule out the possibility that it’s somehow set to hidden or something. But the only thing that did was reset my volume settings for the two monitors

I think I found a fix: I manually added the headset in my pulseaudio config:

  1. List audio devices with aplay -l | grep card
  2. Edit ~/.config/pulse/default.pa and add load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:a,b, where a is the card number and b is the device number

I found these instructions here: https://archived.forum.manjaro.org/t/usb-headset-problems-not-recognized-anymore/133498/3

The only problem I now have is that the headset’s microphone isn’t detected either and I have no clue how I’d go about adding it too

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