Change default port for PulseAudio (line out, not headphones)

Question

When I boot, PulseAudio defaults to sending output to Headphones. I'd like it to default to sending output to Line Out. How do I do that?

I can manually change where the output is current sent as follows: launch the Pulseaudio Volume Control application, go to the Output Devices tab, and next to Port, select the Line Out option instead of Headphones. However, I have to do this after each time I boot the machine -- after a reboot, Pulseaudio resets itself back to Headphones. That's a bit annoying. How do I make my selection stick and persist across reboots?

Here's a screenshot of how the Volume Control application looks after a reboot, with Headphones selected:

If I click on the chooser next to Port, I get the following two options:

Selecting Line Out makes sound work. (Notice that both Headphones and Line Out are marked as "unplugged", but actually I do have something plugged into the Line Out port.)

Comments: I'm not looking for a way to change the default output device. I have only one sound card. pacmd list-sinks shows only one sink. Therefore, pacmd set-default-sink is not helpful. (This doesn't help either.) Here what I need to set is the "Port", not the output device. If it's relevant, I'm using Fedora 20 and pulseaudio-5.0-25.fc21.x86_64.

Answer 1

I had the same problem (for at least a year now), and the following seemed to work:

Taken from: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=164868

Use pavucontrol to change the port to your desired one. Then find the internal name of the port with this command:

$ pacmd list | grep "active port"
    active port: <hdmi-output-0>
    active port: <analog-output-lineout>
    active port: <analog-input-linein>

Using this information about the internal name of the port, we can change it with the command:

pacmd set-sink-port 0 analog-output-lineout

If you (or someone else with the problem) has multiple cards, try changing the 0 to a 1.

If this works, you can put:

set-sink-port 0 analog-output-lineout

in your /etc/pulse/default.pa file to have it across reboots.

Answer 2

When you opened pavucontrol, is your Line Out output uplugged?

• Yes: You have your speakers in wrong connector.
• No or didn't help: Good luck, I have no idea what is wrong.

Explanation: Only plugged in port is used as default, if all are unplugged who knows why it's headphones. PulseAudio tests only one connector (Front speakers / green) but outputs stereo in all of them (if you have more than stereo capable card but your PulseAudio is set to stereo only).