Audio coming from PC and not ALVR - Fixed

[justawesome360]

Description

On KDE Plasma with PipeWire, ALVR headset audio was sometimes playing through my PC speakers instead of the headset.

At first, only my normal Ryzen Analog Stereo output appeared selected. When I changed the Ryzen audio device port from Speakers to Headphones, KDE immediately switched the selected output to ALVR Audio. After that, headset audio worked.

Changing the port back and forth between Speakers and Headphones also caused KDE/WirePlumber to automatically switch between the Ryzen device and ALVR Audio.

So this may not be an ALVR streaming/audio encoder bug. It looks like a KDE Plasma / WirePlumber routing behavior where changing the hardware output port causes PipeWire to re-evaluate the default sink, and only then does ALVR Audio become selected.

Screenshots

Workaround

If ALVR audio is coming from the PC speakers instead of the headset:

1. Open KDE Plasma audio settings.
2. Find the main analog audio device, in my case Ryzen Analog Stereo.
3. Change its port from Speakers to Headphones, or toggle between the two.
4. KDE may then switch the active output to ALVR Audio.
5. Confirm that ALVR Audio is selected as the playback/output device.

The equivalent terminal check is:

pactl list short sinks
pactl info | grep 'Default Sink'

If ALVR Audio exists but is not selected, this can force it as the default sink:

ALVR_SINK="$(pactl list short sinks | awk -F '\t' 'tolower($2) ~ /alvr audio/ {print $2; exit}')"

if [[ -n "$ALVR_SINK" ]]; then
  pactl set-default-sink "$ALVR_SINK"
  echo "Set default sink to: $ALVR_SINK"
else
  echo "ALVR Audio sink not found."
fi

Environment

Desktop environment:
KDE Plasma

Audio stack:

• PipeWire 1.6.7
• WirePlumber 0.5.15
• PulseAudio compatibility through pipewire-pulse
• ALSA for hardware audio devices

ALVR Version:
v20.14.1

Install Type:
Installed through ALVR Launcher. Not Flatpak, not AUR.

SteamVR Version:
SteamVR previous branch / 2.12.14, if this is still your current version.

OS:
Arch Linux, current as of 2026-07-01

Notes

The confusing part is that ALVR Audio may exist, but KDE can still keep the PC speaker device selected. In my case, toggling the analog device port caused KDE/WirePlumber to reselect ALVR Audio, which fixed headset audio.

[zeta0134]

Just adding onto this, I thought I had a similar issue running SteamVR, with KDE Plasma, but I couldn't see the ALVR Audio devices when trying to configure audio. Steam could though! I had to head to audio settings in-headset and switch devices there, and then it worked perfectly.