No audio when connecting headphones after starting playback

[ZevEisenberg]

I use headphones to listen to pianobar on my Mac. Sometimes, I forget to plug in my headphones when I start pianobar. After starting playback and not hearing anything (or disturbing my coworkers), I remember and connect my headphones. However, pianobar doesn't seem to be able to switch its playback to the new output device. I have to exit and restart it in order to hear it through my headphones.

[PromyLOPh]

Sounds alot like #36.

[ZevEisenberg]

Sure does. It looks like that was fixed in libao 6 years ago. Have they not done a release since then?

[PromyLOPh]

Afaik there’s noone maintaining libao currently.

[ZevEisenberg]

Aww, sadness. How critical is it to pianobar? Are there any more current libraries that do the same thing?

[PromyLOPh]

Aww, sadness. How critical is it to pianobar?
Well, it doesn’t work without audio output :) Good thing is, libao works
just fine most of the time.

Are there any more current libraries that do the same thing?
There’s portaudio, which also hasn’t seen a release in the last two
years.

I would step in as maintainer for libao. There’s already a fork at
https://github.com/PromyLOPh/libao. But to make that work I’d need a few
developers for the platforms I cannot support, most importantly Windows
and macOS.

[sehrgut]

Oddly, this doesn't always fail for me. Sometimes it successfully switches from Bluetooth to internal speaker; rarer it successfully switches to Bluetooth from internal. Would a sighup handler or "reconnect audio" command be a feasible workaround?

[PromyLOPh]

Does it work on the next track or do you have to restart pianobar like Zev? If a restart is required there’s probably nothing I can do. Otherwise closing and reopening the audio device might help. Obviously libao should be fixed nontheless.

[sehrgut]

I'll test it and get back to you.

…

On Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 12:38 PM PromyLOPh ***@***.***> wrote: Does it work on the next track or do you have to restart pianobar like Zev? If a restart is required there’s probably nothing I can do. Otherwise closing and reopening the audio device might help. Obviously libao should be fixed nontheless. — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#589 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABIFLFaBjaWpIN3YSVDKcZknxiXhlLDqks5rGuOFgaJpZM4I_T5E> .

[ZevEisenberg]

I think I've since seen cases where it doesn't fail for me either, but it's hard to say for sure. It may have started with headphones in, then unplugged, then re-plugged.

[sehrgut]

Okay, it does switch when the next song plays back. As well, it switches seamlessly back to onboard audio when BT is disconnected. For me, as well (2015 MBP) switching between internal speakers and wired headphones is always seamless, as is switching between different BT audio devices.

[PromyLOPh]

Actually, there already is a signal you can use. Sending SIGINT (^C) will restart the current song and thereby reopen the audio device (unless pianobar expects user input, i.e. you pulled up a menu). Which libao backend are we talking about? pulseaudio?

[mralexgray]

control+c works!