Q4OS Forum

LateJunction

Member

Registered: 2026-09-13

Posts: 1

How to use other sound hardware in Q4OS?

I'm evaluating Q4OS by running Andromeda 6.8 TDE from a live USB on an old Fujitsu P400, with the 'middle' level user profile. Having installed Audacious in the live environment, it plays through the default sound hardware on the P400 motherboard without issue (I have no idea of whether the software environment is ALSA,  Pulse Audio, Pipewire or something else). What I want to do is to play music through my separate hi-fi installation, for which a Focusrite 2i2 DAC/ADC is USB connected to the PC. This configuration works well when I boot Win 10 from the SSD or when I boot Fedora 44 from a different SSD. Under Q4OS I can 'see' the Focusrite hardware in Control Panel>Device Manager, in 2 places in fact: under USB and under Sound, but I cannot understand how to make the system use that hardware device. How do I do that?

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 6,424

Website

Re: How to use other sound hardware in Q4OS?

We would try pavucontrol-qt first. The Device Manager only confirms that the USB hardware is detected; audio output selection is handled by the PipeWire/PulseAudio layer.
Install it with:
$ sudo apt install pavucontrol-qt

Then run:
$ pavucontrol-qt

In the "Output Devices" tab, the Focusrite 2i2 should appear. Select it and, if available, set it as the fallback device. While Audacious is playing, check the "Playback" tab as well and make sure its stream is routed to the Focusrite.
For diagnosis, please post the output of:
$ pactl info
$ pactl list short sinks
$ aplay -l
$ inxi -A

The `aplay -l` output should show the Focusrite as a USB audio device. If it appears there but not in pavucontrol-qt, the USB/ALSA side is working and we can investigate the PipeWire configuration.