Pulseaudio disturbs hdmi signal to tv and causes tv to blank/reconnect?

[THX1182]

Hi there Pi community,

I have been facing a very annoying problem with my Raspberry Pi 4 4Gb version, but i think i have pinpointed the problem thus far and need help resolving the issue.

Operating systems:

Raspbian, Libreelec dualboot using NOOBS.

Problem:

My television basically reconnects to the pi (or the other way around) after playing any kind of media, this is a short 2 second re-connection of some sorts. This is happening in both Raspbian as well as in Libreelec, so i started troubleshooting to find the root of my issue.

I troubleshooted peripherals, config.txt hdmi settings, my psu, my television, my sd card and reinstalled everything a couple of times.

(BTW in Raspbian the re-connection also occurs, just after the desktop loads up maybe that's when pulse starts?)

Nothing seemed to work so i decided to use hdmi port 0 instead of 1, of course port 1 has no audio at the moment but that worked in my advantage.

The re-connecting/blanking does not occur when audio is disabled!? So decided to plug my cable back into hdmi port 0 and voila the trouble started again! So my next thought to try and uninstall pulseaudio, to see what would happen and guess what happened next??? the TV re-connecting/blanking dissapeared again! So basically pulse is creating the problem somewhere, when sending audio through hdmi to my television set.

What could be going on? And how can i resolve this issue? Without audio my Pi is useless for my needs (media/desktop), and i would hate to get rid of my wonderful new machine...

I don't know how to share the appropriate logs to troubleshoot this weird issue, but maybe someone can help me to sort this mess out (again).

Thanks in advance

This is my second topic in the troubleshooting section, please forgive me for my persistence and remove my previous topic. I actually pinpointed the exact reason for the problem i am facing with my raspberry pi.

[gkreidl]

You don't need pulseaudio to have audio output. In fact it is not installed by default.

[THX1182]

You don't need pulseaudio to have audio output. In fact it is not installed by default.

Huh??? So how come I can uninstall it? I lose volume control when I do!

How do I regain volume control, after getting rid of Pulse in Raspbian? And how do I get rid of pulse in Libreelec?

[gkreidl]

You don't need pulseaudio to have audio output. In fact it is not installed by default.

Huh??? So how come I can uninstall it? I lose volume control when I do!

How do I regain volume control, after getting rid of Pulse in Raspbian? And how do I get rid of pulse in Libreelec?

The Raspbian desktop has its own Volume control plugin. All video players have their own audio controls.
A cannot say anything about Libreelec, but kodi on Raspbian doesn't depend on pulseaudio.
In fact, the pulseaudio client libraries are installed by default, but not the pulseaudio sound server.

[THX1182]

You don't need pulseaudio to have audio output. In fact it is not installed by default.

Huh??? So how come I can uninstall it? I lose volume control when I do!

How do I regain volume control, after getting rid of Pulse in Raspbian? And how do I get rid of pulse in Libreelec?

The Raspbian desktop has its own Volume control plugin. All video players have their own audio controls.
A cannot say anything about Libreelec, but kodi on Raspbian doesn't depend on pulseaudio.
In fact, the pulseaudio client libraries are installed by default, but not the pulseaudio sound server.

Going to test out and report back, because this is confusing as heck.

Update: You are absolutely right!!! My apologies but I've been racking my brain over this issue for days now!

Update 2.0:

I am officially losing my mind... It's not alsa (I think) because I uninstalled alsa-utils, and does exactly the same thing. Here's a video of what's happening:

Rasping 4 tv reconnecting. https://imgur.com/gallery/n2bRnWE

I am slowly losing my marbles!

Update 3.0

Connected to another tv everything works... What can I do to resolve this issue? Should try an hdmi switch to enhance the signal?

[gkreidl]

You have not told us, which media player you are using (on Raspbian). Kodi (using Libreelec or Raspbian) and omxplayer can switch the video resolution when playing video to match screen and video resolution and FPS. This might cause the effect you describe. It can be disabled in Kodi.

[ejolson]

You have not told us, which media player you are using (on Raspbian). Kodi (using Libreelec or Raspbian) and omxplayer can switch the video resolution when playing video to match screen and video resolution and FPS. This might cause the effect you describe. It can be disabled in KoEdi.

In the video clip which shows the TV cutting out, the video is playing in a window. There is no indication that the screen resolution is being changed.

What happens if you play a sound file instead of a video file? Does the screen also shut off at the end of a sound file?

[THX1182]

You have not told us, which media player you are using (on Raspbian). Kodi (using Libreelec or Raspbian) and omxplayer can switch the video resolution when playing video to match screen and video resolution and FPS. This might cause the effect you describe. It can be disabled in Kodi.

You have not told us, which media player you are using (on Raspbian). Kodi (using Libreelec or Raspbian) and omxplayer can switch the video resolution when playing video to match screen and video resolution and FPS. This might cause the effect you describe. It can be disabled in KoEdi.

In the video clip which shows the TV cutting out, the video is playing in a window. There is no indication that the screen resolution is being changed.

What happens if you play a sound file instead of a video file? Does the screen also shut off at the end of a sound file?

First of all thank you for helping me out!

I am using VLC in Raspbian... I can't check right now, but will check what happens when playing an audio file asap.

[THX1182]

Update 4.0

I can confirm that the same thing happens when playing audio.

Next thing i tried was changing the hdmi audio setting in my TV to analogue (i think this disables sound via hdmi), and the reconnecting/restarting is gone!

Kind of stuck at this point... Is there something i can adjust in the Pi to resolve this? Because i need sound through HDMI.

Thanks again for helping out.

[THX1182]

Dear mods,

You can close this thread... I've decided to hook the Pi up via RCA and the 3.5 Jack, this stops the blanking/reconnections...

For all of those who are facing similar issues, set hdmi audio to analogue in you TV. Plug in the RCA/3.5 Jack in your Pi, and hook up to the input of your TV.

Set system audio to analogue, and boom you are ready to go.

Hope this helps someone.

[gkreidl]

get a better HDMI cable: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 9#p1552209

[darrow09]

For all of those who are facing similar issues, set hdmi audio to analogue in you TV. Plug in the RCA/3.5 Jack in your Pi, and hook up to the input of your TV.

Set system audio to analogue, and boom you are ready to go.

That's more of a workaround and doesn't really address the issue. The problem is poor quality micro hdmi cable restricting the bandwidth. I had the same problem as you but solved it by switching the cable. See the post that gkreidl linked to.

[THX1182]

For all of those who are facing similar issues, set hdmi audio to analogue in you TV. Plug in the RCA/3.5 Jack in your Pi, and hook up to the input of your TV.

Set system audio to analogue, and boom you are ready to go.

That's more of a workaround and doesn't really address the issue. The problem is poor quality micro hdmi cable restricting the bandwidth. I had the same problem as you but solved it by switching the cable. See the post that gkreidl linked to.

get a better HDMI cable: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 9#p1552209

You guys are right but I already tried 3 different cables, one being a cable from element14... I highly doubt a 4th cable is going to change the outcome, although I might try one soon. Maybe all three cables are rubbish

Thanks again for helping me out.

I could not help myself so I ordered a similar extender... Pffft let's hope this works. Will keep you updated lol...