Xperia 10 III audio and video problems trigger after a period of time in use

In my case it was definitely independent from GPS and /or Android support. It occurred today with location off and no GPS use, also Android support was off

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Hey, so this is a Pulse Audio issue.
The quick fix is to run something like this in the terminal pulseaudio -k, which kills the existing pulseaudio process and starts a new one. If your terminal is irresponsible, reboot.
In android apps, sometimes mic won’t work but audio still works. While pulseaudio -k could work, sometimes closing the app altogether and restarting it, can fix the issue.

They always tell us to get logs, particularly journalctl -b --no-pager as devel-su or sudo. However, this logs everything, and pin-pointing when the issue arises can be challenging.

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Today was again the audio locked in speakers.
After devel-su:
pulseaudio -k
gave an error message that translates to “background process not interrupted found, no suitabke process”

PA runs as normal user, not super user. So, no devel-su before killing it…

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Oh thanks for letting me know, I will test next time as regular user

A “friendlier” way to do it is systemctl --user restart pulseaudio (as defaultuser).

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I do stop and start pulseaudio, i had better results with that

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I’ve encountered this bug 3 times over the last two years of using XIII and ‘pulseaudio -k’ worked both times I was aware of it as an option, I think the more elaborate systemd calls should be used by the system itself if it’s possible to diagnose the situation happening without user actively not hearing anything

Unfortunately I experience it nearly daily, but killing pulseaudio as default user did the trick, thanks again to all of you. That’s a simple and doable workaround for me.

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wow, that’s pretty much as reproducible as can be, pls contact jolla support, they will want your logs, with most of us experiencing it once per year you just cannot catch it in logs, almost daily is as good as it gets

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but annoying during important phone calls

Yaeh, just like 112 failing when you really need it, but there is no good way to test, unless you want to end up on the fake 112 callers list

Please read @direc85 post, that’s the “right” workaround, and you can even use qCommand to make it an icon in your app drawer for quick access. :wink:

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that’s just the same as ‘pulseaudio -k’, all he does is execs the same as defaultuser and using more chars

I disagree, ‘pulseaudio -k’ is a kill command, and that is like punching someone on the nose instead of nicely asking him to turn around. :wink:
Yeaa… I know the end result is the same, mostly…

Yeah in theory sure, in practice no as it will just restart


there is no magic pulseaudio happening here, whether you systemctl restart pulseaudio or pulseaudio -k end result is the same, it restarts always

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And then again… why would you want to send a general to do the work of a private? It’s just not good practice.
Lets just agree to disagree, because my dog will start eating me if I don’t go for that walk. :wink:

I’ve no clue, but can guarantee you that pulseaudio -k ends up in the exact same restart state for pulseaudio, that has in its service file restart=always, so in theory if it’s broken (no audio) it should trigger that itself, buf it obviously doesn’t as people report hearing nothing, pls don’t terrorise your dog and give him a good excercise

Bug is still present on my 10III with latest SFOS version (4.6.0.11). Very annoying.

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Its never happend when the gps is off.
Starting the gps for using in e.g. Pure Maps the issue with no sound and video in slowmotion will occurre shortly after. In the beginning I used the pulse command, but now I restart the phone to be sure.