Audio cutting out when docked
Audio cutting out when docked
Does anyone’s deck audio cut out when docked? Mine does this every so often. Wondering if there’s a fix for this.
It's a known bug. I don't want to take the effort of digging it up, but there was a reddit thread about a month ago about this and someone linked to the steam forum post with tons of people having this issue and valve stating that they're working on a software fix.
Mine also does this. It's very annoying and sometimes I just plug in headphones while docked because of it. Other times I come out of sleep (specifically in persona 5) and the audio is weird and choppy, but I don't know if that's related.
It felt like a bug. Good to know I'm not the only one!
I'm pretty sure this is the bug report! Theoretically, it should be fixed in SteamOS 3.5 https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/1/3472864793301381863/
Nice! Yeah I hope it's fixed for good
I've never had a problem, I use a usbc dock and the audio goes over hdmi.
You may have a bad cable. Digital stuff that's got intermittent problems is often a cable issue.
I’ve swapped the cables out but it unfortunately didn’t change anything.
I've also tried 3-4 cables, and they're all about the same.
Might be time to talk to valve about an rma then.
Does audio work fine undocked? Before looking at something like an rma I’d recommend switching is branches to force an update and/or reimaging the ssd to see if it’s an OS issue. Idk how likely that is but beats going without the deck while it’s out for service
Yeah it works fine audio wise without. I’m wondering if it’s similar to the echo cancel sink bug.
It could be, I almost never actually use my dock so hard to judge. with it being intermittent over usbc and not being affected by different cables I would hazard a guess that either the dock is having issues, or steamOS is though. If you're ok with using the konsole you could try
cat /var/log/syslog* | grep -i pulseand see if it states what's going on with the audio server.
Edit: journalctl would also work if you want to see logs in real time while debugging, use
sudo journalctl -f
I've noticed that my audio only cuts out and sounds crackly with some TVs. For some reason, changing the resolution seems to fix the issue (at least for as long as I have my Steam Deck plugged in). This is with both the official dock and a cheap Anker dock.
Huh. Interesting workaround! So instead of 1280x720 you bump it down a little bit?
Yup! It seems that switching the resolution is the key. For me, at least, the sound works fine on every other resolution switch. I usually switch it to something lower, then something else, then back to the resolution I want. It's pretty annoying, but it doesn't take too long and is way less annoying than crackling audio.
It's a hardware issue with the dock. Not a whole lot you can do about it
Like a known hardware issue?
IIRC it's a bug not specific to the Steam Deck, but something to do with the way Linux is handling audio. So the fix then is harder to get implemented since it isn't confined to code that Valve controls. Valve has to wait for the problem to be fixed in the greater Linuxosphere first, but I'm sure they're assisting with it.