Raspberry Pi 4 HDMI sound stopped working (was fine before)

pmdci

Hi there,

Just finished finishing my Retropie on a 8GB RP4. Everything was working fine until I did a reboot. HDMI sound is no longer working.

Sound was working fine until the last reboot. Last thing I did was to install the Desktop port.
I plugged earphones on the pi and I can hear sound coming from it.
I had a look at the configuration file for ES and the audio device is set to HDMI
I keep getting the error "failed to find mixer elements".

Been wrecking my head for the past hour on this. Any ideas?

mitu

@pmdci said in Raspberry Pi 4 HDMI stopped working (was fine before):

I keep getting the error "failed to find mixer elements".

You must have installed PulseAudio with the desktop env. Use the Audio menu in the RetroPie system and re-configure the audio again (to use HDMI). In EmulationStation, change the Audio Device to one of Master/PCM and see if you still get the message.

pmdci

@mitu

Hi @mitu thanks for helping out. I have tried to what you suggested but no luck.

Under the ES sound settings I tried the following:

Audio Device: PCM
Audio Device: Master

None of these worked for me.

I rebooted with each try.
I also re-ran the audio configurator and re-selected HDMI with each attempt.
AUDIO CARD is set to Default in the ES Sound Settings.

Should I remove Pulse Audio? Or perhaps uninstall the Desktop altogether?

mitu

@pmdci said in Raspberry Pi 4 HDMI stopped working (was fine before):

Should I remove Pulse Audio? Or perhaps uninstall the Desktop altogether?

No, that's not necessary - RetroPie should work with both of them installed. Re-configuring the audio doesn't need a restart.

What's the output if you run aplay -l ?

pmdci

@mitu

pi@retropie:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: b1 [bcm2835 HDMI 1], device 0: bcm2835 HDMI 1 [bcm2835 HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 4/4
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
  Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
  Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
card 1: Headphones [bcm2835 Headphones], device 0: bcm2835 Headphones [bcm2835 Headphones]
  Subdevices: 3/4
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
  Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
  Subdevice #3: subdevice #3

pmdci

@mitu

Call me trigger-hapy, but I uninstalled PulseAudio:

sudo apt purge pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

Now the audio is back on. Also the system is much, MUCH more responsive. Before I used to get a lot of delays/lags when navigating through the menus. This issue is gone now.

mitu

@pmdci If you still wish to use the desktop, then make sure to uninstall the lxplug-volumepulse package, otherwise the desktop panel will crash without PulseAudio support.
EDIT: Are you using a PS4 controller (Dualshock) by any chance ?

pmdci

@mitu

Seems like the plug-in is not installed...

pi@retropie:~$ sudo apt purge lxplug-volumepulse
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package 'lxplug-volumepulse' is not installed, so not removed
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libpulsedsp libsbc1 libwebrtc-audio-processing1 pulseaudio-utils rtkit
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
pi@retropie:~$

I am using an 8BitDo controller. It is incredible but the system is now VERY responsive comparing to when PulseAudio was installed!

I trust I can still use audio on the desktop without PulseAudio?
EDIT: Yes, I can. Just lost my volume mixer :-)

mitu

Try installing lxplug-volume and maybe the mixer will show up again.

Gazbusola

I’ve got a similar issue with a new 2gb raspberry. Whenever I upload a rom or restart I lose sound completely. The only way to get it back is put my HDMI cable in a different port on TV and it works again. It’s been doing my head in as cannot find a proper solution.

pmdci

@mitu

I managed to just add the default volume widget for the desktop.

I followed your advice and installed lxplug-volume (not the pulse version). I can see it installed some stuff and it also removed some other pulse leftovers (which is good!)

However I didn't see any difference in the desktop for volume. As I said above, I did add a speaker icon at my taskbar before installing lxplug-volume, and it does have one volume slider. Seems like installing lxplug-volume didn't add anything on top of that.

pmdci

@gazbusola

My issue clearly had to do with pulseaudio, which I have no use for (at least for now!) on my current Raspberry Setup.

Your issue might have to do with the different HDMI modes. Have you looked into the config file for all the HDMI settings?