Update: It’s fixed! Spoiler tag for anyone who wants to think about what it could be before send the solution.

spoiler

I don’t know why exactly this fixed it, but Max_P suggested deleting the pipewire and wireplumber folders and restarting. This has solved my issues!

Original post:

Hi there.

I swapped the drive because my old steam deck is the “good” one, the first one we bought. My wife has been using it so much lately, we decided to get a second one. She doesn’t need a 2TB drive, so I swapped it with the 512GB one that came with the “new” deck.

Why not just give her the new deck? It’s screen is cracked, and it has other issues I’m going to fix. I want her to have the nice one.

The issue is software related, the headphones work fine with the old nvme. Likewise, I slapped a 256GB 2280 drive in there, did a fresh steam install, and it works fine.

Things I’ve tried:

Searching online, nobody else seems to have this exact issue.

Restarting with headphones plugged in.

Rapidly changing between outputs in the settings.

Going into desktop mode and manually fiddling with the headphones in the audio settings.

Bluetooth headphones work fine.

So far nothing makes the wired headphones work.

I don’t want to factory reset my Deck, but I will if I have to. My next step is to do a system repair using the install media, to see if it finds and fixes anything. But it gives a warning about potential data loss if it fails. So first, I am running rescuzilla and backing up the entire drive. I don’t have a spare nvme big enough to test that backup, so it’s not really a backup, but, that’s where I’m at.

Does anyone else have any suggestions?

Thanks

Edit: added to the things I’ve tried

  • Grass@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    21 days ago

    bazzite is layered on fedora which is the bulk of the system and fedora isn’t going anywhere any time soon but with the small market share of linux in general valve does have much more recognition in the gaming community which is traditionally very windows leaning. I’ve also seen people preferring it because of the arch base but rolling release distros being converted to atomic is an iffy choice. but yeah switching is only worth it if starting over is already necessary. I switched when I did the nvme upgrade.

    • beastlykings@sh.itjust.worksOP
      1·
      21 days ago

      Small point, just for the sake of discussion, since you seem knowledgeable and I’m sure you already know:

      Upgrading your storage doesn’t strictly require starting over. When I went from 512 to 2tb, I just cloned the drive, then expanded the main partition to fit. Worked like a charm 👌

      For most people though yeah it’s probably easier starting over than fussing with cloning.

      I’ll be cloning my buddy’s 64gb drive as soon as he buys something bigger.

      • Grass@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        21 days ago

        I keep everything including games backed up and accessible over lan and haven’t felt the need to clone a drive ever. If I didn’t have space for a game I’d just delete a bunch and local transfer if I wanted to play it later. It really just boils down to distro hoppers gonna hop though…