22.04 LTS: alsa-library + PulseAudio won't detect my USB sound card

[Eric Richards]

ALSA+Pulseaudio have always been difficult with USB Sound. In order to make it work under the best of circumstances, one would have to edit

    /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

And comment out any line that said

    options snd-usb-audio index=-2

Without commenting that out, PulseAudio cannot detect the card.

Now, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS worked for a while with that change. Until Roughly the last week of September, 2022. A normal update got pushed which disabled my sound card.

Alsa-lib version: 1.2.6.1

In /var/log/syslog:

Oct 02 14:33:56 patchwork alsactl[1000]: alsa-lib main.c:1412:(snd_use_case_mgr_open) error: failed to import hw:1 use case configuration -2

After two weeks of effort, and attempts to roll back to an earlier version of 22.04 LTS, I scrubbed the root partition and reverted to 20.04 LTS which works right.

Samples of output from my exercise can be found here:

    https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2479484

Again, Xubuntu 22.04 LTS worked (after the alsa-base.conf edit) fine, Until the end of September update.

The above thread on ubuntuforums.org has samples of lsusb, syslog, output from various ALSA utilities and PulseAudio utilities, brands and models of USB sound DACs tried, alsa-version output, and so on.

If you need me to, I can build a throwaway system to get you any further information you want, but I'd rather not scrub a fully configured root partition *again* to go through this effort.

linuxquestions.org showed that a search on "failed to open hw:1 use case configuration" or subsets of that phrase will show this bug.

The tip of the ALSA development chain release notes for a while back shows no effort put forward to fixing this problem. What works is Alsa-lib version 1.2.2.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Libera.chat.

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[Eric Richards (efricha)]

Alsa-lib + Pulseaudio. Library version 1.2.6.1