Audio Troubleshooting - How to split front/rear audio ports into separate playback devices?

I'm new to bazzite (and only dabbled with ubuntu 15 years ago), but while getting things set up I noticed something odd about my audio devices.

Context: I'm running the desktop kde nvidia version. I have speakers plugged into the line out 3.5mm rear jack and a headset into the front. I was able to use alsamixer to enable both ports to play audio without unplugging anything, but for some reason this treats them as the same output device with a port toggle.

On win10 I run voicemeeter banana and virtual devices to split VOIP (discord, zoom, etc) audio from everything else to send that to my headset while using the speakers for desktop audio (games, videos, etc). I'm trying to replicate that here but the headset and speakers need to be separate devices (which they are in win10). I've dug around and this appears to be a common thing with pipewire, but I couldn't find any real solution.

Is there any known working method to split my front/rear audio ports into separate devices/sinks on bazzite?

Or if there's no easy way to split the front/rear audio ports in bazzite, does anyone know how other gaming or linux distros handle them instead?

biebel•7/28/25, 8:33 PM

Your best bet would be to create virtual sinks with ujust setup-virtual-channelsujust setup-virtual-channels and route via qpwgraph I think.

dokupeOP•7/28/25, 9:05 PM

I'm starting from a fresh install after whatever I did last not letting me boot consistently, so testing now to see if this will work. Thanks!

biebel•7/28/25, 9:21 PM

I'm guessing you don't have a mic or a monitor with audio jacks. That would make things a lot easier.

dokupeOP•7/28/25, 9:36 PM

I have a usb blue yeti with an audio jack, but my headset is the mic I primarily use and the output I want for all voip programs, so I don't think that'll help?

biebel•7/28/25, 9:44 PM

If it's seen as a separate audio device, your goal would be quite easy to configure if the virtual audio sinks don't work out. Digging deep into pipewire/wireplumber is really hard and the documentation is horrid imo.

dokupeOP•7/28/25, 9:49 PM

My main monitor does have an audio jack too, but I've got a unique set up already using it. I have a 3.5mm audio switcher so the speaker can be used for desktop audio (rear audio port) or chromecast (hooked up into my monitor in a spare hdmi).

I'm currently reinstalling bazzite and will test the virtual sinks first.

dokupeOP•7/28/25, 10:14 PM

But yes, my entire goal is to get bazzite to treat my headset and speakers as separate devices. Is treating rear/front audio ports as a single device the default with pipewire/fedora/bazzite?

biebel•7/28/25, 10:30 PM

My guess is that it depends on the driver, so you'll most likely have the same results with any distro using the same kernel and audio stack. Haven't tried using both at the same time. If they have separate identifiers, you should be able to carve them out through a custom configuration or with coppwr, but that's way above my head stuff. Reading the docs to configure pipewire to play my server audio to my pi almost broke me tbh.

dokupeOP•7/29/25, 1:25 AM

Hmm, it doesn't look like qpwgraph views them as separate devices to control. it's the same single output I'm seeing in the regular audio devices

dokupeOP•7/29/25, 1:27 AM

All I can do is swap between line out and headphones in playback devices, but they're the same thing in qpwgraph either way

dokupeOP•7/29/25, 1:40 AM

They do have separate identifiers in alsamixer (line out and headphones), so it knows they aren't the same thing

dokupeOP•7/29/25, 4:16 AM

I found a guide, but I'm not actually sure how to follow step 3.2 for bazzite. it's immutable, right? I wasn't able to create the first file, so I'm stuck.

https://github.com/luisbocanegra/linux-guide-split-audio-ports

GitHub

GitHub - luisbocanegra/linux-guide-split-audio-ports: Split jack(he...

Split jack(headphones)/speakers outputs into individual sinks on Linux to allow simultaneous playback (listen to different audio streams on each port) - luisbocanegra/linux-guide-split-audio-ports

biebel•7/29/25, 4:07 PM

Did you sudo to create the udev rule file?

dokupeOP•7/29/25, 7:25 PM

I downloaded the files from their github and modified them, then copied them as admin to the locations they specify. So I have the .rules file and the .sh script in place and rebooted. I don't see the alt analog sub device when checking aplay

dokupeOP•7/29/25, 7:38 PM

The two ports (lineout/headphones) are what I'm trying to separate, so I can use both ports as individual sinks.

dokupeOP•7/29/25, 7:40 PM

more info about the codec

biebel•7/29/25, 7:49 PM

The thing I don't see in the guide is to set the bash script as executable. sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/alsa-split-ports-hints.shsudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/alsa-split-ports-hints.sh should do that. I've not looked into the details of the guide, just looked at it to see if it's possible on bazzite, and it is

dokupeOP•7/29/25, 9:15 PM

I ran chmod on the script, but not sure anything changed based on the aplay result. I see the script calls for the split conf profile, so I'll need to work through setting that up for my system first

dokupeOP•7/30/25, 8:21 PM

So I've given up on this. I realized one of my other monitors also has an audio port in the back which is already listed separately in devices, so I can now route audio how I want without needing to separate the front/rear audio ports.

biebel•7/30/25, 10:48 PM

Glad you figured something out to make it work. Kudos to the author of that guide for figuring out how to do it and making a guide for it.

Bbiebel Glad you figured something out to make it work. Kudos to the author of that guid...

dokupeOP•7/31/25, 12:12 AM

thanks for trying to help me!

dokupeOP•7/31/25, 3:39 AM

And just in case anyone is looking at this in the future and looking for what application I'm using to mimic voicemeeter's functionality, it's called sonusmixer. Very useful and easy to set up virtual devices for splitting audio.

Audio Troubleshooting - How to split front/rear audio ports into separate playback devices?

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