Sound in headphones not working when switching from firefox to VLC

[alonso hayes]

Hi, this is the some info about my laptop:

Operating System: Kubuntu 23.04
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.104.0
Qt Version: 5.15.8
Kernel Version: 6.2.0-20-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 4 × Intel® Core™ i5-7200U CPU @ 2.50GHz
Memory: 23.1 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 620
Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
Product Name: Inspiron 15-3567

I am using this wireless bluetooth headphones connected to my pc.

The headphones connects fine, when i open the browser and play some audio, it works fine, but when i switch to playing something via VLC, the sound disappears. I have to go to the Settings > Audio and change the profile to "High Fedility playback (A2DP sink)", then the sound somes back.

How can i solve this problem ?

[Schwarzer Kater]

Welcome!

What happens when you connect wired headphones to the 3.5mm jack or wired USB headphones?
Same behavior?

When switching from listening from VLC first to Firefox second - same behavior?

Firefox Snap or Firefox Flatpak or "traditional" Firefox?

[alonso hayes]

What happens when you connect wired headphones to the 3.5mm jack or wired USB headphones?
Same behavior?

Wired headphones works perfectly. This problem is only with bluetooth connected headphones.

When switching from listening from VLC first to Firefox second - same behavior?

No, this only happened so far when using firefox then VLC, and it happens sometimes and sometimes not.

Firefox Snap or Firefox Flatpak or "traditional" Firefox?

Traditional Firefox from firefox website

[jlittle]

I can't solve the problem directly, but can offer a couple of easier ways to switch.

1. Click on the volume indicator in the system tray. I sometimes have to do that when turning off bluetooth headphones, the output device goes back to the wrong device.

2. You could make a widget (menu, desktop, or panel) that runs a pulse audio command*, and maybe set a shortcut for it. On my laptop it's

pactl set-default-sink​ alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo

Find out the "sink" name by running pactl get-default-sink. To make a widget I always add a menu item (right-click application menu, usually at the far left of the panel, click "Edit Applications") then drag it from the menu to where I want it to go. In the menu editor the advanced tab can set a shortcut.

* conceivably, a new 23.04 install might not have the package pipewire-pulse, so if pactl is not found I suggest installing that