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I am hoping to work around the fact that my normal headphone jack is broken and doesn't pick up headphones very well at all. My thought is that it might be possible to use the surround ports on the back instead: the ports in the back I have found out here that the line out port is used for front speakers in surround systems so I thought it might be the best port to use for the headphone hardware.

I'm assuming that alsa has a specific profile set for this port that is not intended for use with headphones, so I am wondering whether there is a way, under Arch Linux, to take the configuration for the front headphone port and apply it to line out, as I won't be using surround audio systems at all.

I am using pulseaudio to manage my sound and I would like to find out whether this can be done using it. If not, I would like to know how to configure alsa to reach my goal, using the pulseaudio-alsa plugin to make ALSA work with pulse.

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    Have a look at module-remap-sink. However, headphones have different impedance from line-connections, so your headphones may or may not work properly when connected to surround. You'll also need to buy a adapter if you want stereo, so it may be cheaper to buy a new headphone jack, and solder it in.
    – dirkt
    May 20, 2021 at 20:02

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Arch package alsa-tools contains the hdajackretask tool, which can be used to reconfigure the sound card input/output ports

This can be used to disable the broken audio jack and retask another jack as a headphone output. The front microphone jack is usually preferred for convenience, but any available jack (except digital) can be retasked

  1. Run the retask tool with root privileges - sudo hdajackretask
  2. Find the Pin connection – Green Headphone, Front Side
    Click to enable Override
    select Not Connected from drop-down menu
  3. Select a Pin connection to retask and enable Override
    Select Headphone from drop-down menu
  4. Click Install boot override

hdajackretask_headphone_jack

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  • Worked right away and much better than I thought. Thank you!
    – John K
    Jul 1, 2021 at 13:09

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