Problems with Soundblaster Z

General system Kernel, boot, graphics & hardware
1

Hi everyone,

I’m having trouble getting my Sound Blaster Z (CA0132) to work properly under EndeavourOS (Arch).

I have the following setup:

EndeavourOS, Kernel 6.16.10-arch1-1
SoundBlaster Z PCIe card (CA0132 chipset)
Headphones connected via analog 3.5 mm jack to the card’s headphone output
I did not install any additonal sound servers or other sound related packages.

This is what happens:

In “system settings → sound” I enabled the Soundblaster card and selected analoge stereo duplex (for mic and headphones).
Then under “Port” I selected “Line-output / Headphone (not connected)”, this (and only this) works when I click “Test” (I can hear the front left and front right sound snippet).
But I can only hear system sounds, in no other application do I have working sound (tested with YouTube and Elisa player).
Also after every reboot the “Port” is set to “Headphone”, which does not work at all.
Also when I switch from “Headpone” to “Line-output / Headphone (not connected)” I can hear Youtube or whatever is playing for a split second, after that only system sounds work…

I already played around with alsamixer and pavucontrol to no avail…

It looks like Linux detects the wrong output (thats why it always switches to the headphone port?) and then it tries to “route” all sounds to this one.
But I have no idea how to change this.

Please let me know if you need any additional info.
Thank you for reading and for any help!

regards

2

Try disabling all other audio devices that are listed via System Settings -> Sound
I’m not certain if you’re using KDE Plasma, at least you didn’t mentioned it.
The should be a volume control for the audio devices in the system tray, double click on that, you should see three vertical dots for each output device - that allows to activate the specific profiles and additionally, there should be the Play all audio via this device option. That setting should persist between boots, without the need to trigger it manually each time.

In case this doesn’t work, it should be feasible to declare the line-out of the Soundblaster Z card via pipewire & wireplumber, which is a bit more involved.

3

I have the XzR in my Media PC running EndeavourOS

No issues for a long time.

I usually watch stuff true Kodi, Netflix, or YouTube.

4

Sorry, forgot to mention, yes I am using KDE Plasma.

I found the Play all audio via this device setting but only for some devices. For example I can enable it for the Radeon HD Audio Controller but not for my SoundBlaster…

Is there a way to enable this in a config file or something like this?

thanks for your help so far.