Hi,
I was used to switching between laptop speakers and Bluetooth speaker on the normal audio menu.
But one day, I needed to use a TV's speakers through HDMI, and couldn't find it, so I initially thought it was a driver issue, but never found a fix, so I had to use a friend's Windows laptop at the last minute because people were waiting to watch something.
Today, months later, I have the same issue, but on a different laptop with more recent hardware, so I was hoping to have better luck, and I didn't... Until I accidentaly notice that the HDMI device is available under a submenu of the laptop's speakers, WTF ?
Attached to this post is a screenshot showing a Bluetooth speaker, the laptop's speakers and HDMI speakers. Why isn't the latter available at the same location as the former two ?
The submenu could be kept for selecting between 2.0/5.1/7.1, just like for Bluetooth devices it's used to select between aptX/LDAC/SBC, but I don't understand what's a whole different device doing in that submenu of the laptop's speakers.
Thanks
This menu is for switching the device profile. Different programs can output audio to different devices, but a device can only have a single profile at a time active.
So, this menu can’t be flattened because the driver for the device doesn’t support outputting to both the speakers and the HDMI port at the same time. If the hardware supports it, this would have to be fixed in the driver, or at least ALSA or PipeWire. Plasma can’t do anything about this.
It's possible it does work if you use the "Pro Audio" profile, but just isn't supported by the existing profiles for whatever reason.
That's kind of a nuclear option for a normal user, though, and there's no guarantee it will help.