I don't have any headset exhibiting such issues myself, but it sounds like pulseaudio is not detecting all available profiles reliably, maybe due to a race condition.
Since there are three newer versions of PulseAudio in Ubuntu releases after 18.04, the first thing we should check is to see if this has already been fixed. When you can please boot 20.04 (prerelease) from USB: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ and tell us if the bug still exists there. ** Changed in: pulseaudio (Ubuntu) Status: New => Incomplete -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to pulseaudio in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1865499 Title: pulseaudio doesn't detect (new) USB headset Status in pulseaudio package in Ubuntu: Incomplete Bug description: When booting the system (Lenovo Thinkpad L480/L490), all connected USB headsets are recognized and can be used, and configured via pavucontrol. When hot-plugging the USB headset, either the speaker is recognized, or the microphone, rarely both. But when both are recognized, the microphone is always a "multichannel" device. When both the speaker and the "multichannel" microphone are recognized, only one can be used - either speaker or microphone. When selecting the speaker, the microphone is switched back to any other device available, them same goes for the microphone and the speaker - any other speaker is selected. A workaround is to plug in the USB headset and run "pkill -U $USER pulseaudio". Everything works fine until the next hot-plug (eg. a second headset). Running "lsb_release -a" gives No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS Release: 18.04 Codename: bionic Attached is the output from "ubuntu-bug pulseaudio". Currently 10 % of our users are affected by this bug, all running the same Ubuntu and package versions. I activated the proposed repository to check if any updates available fix the problem, but to no avail. I also switched kernels (from 4.15 to 5.5 mainline from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/MainlineBuilds). I read bug #1325282 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/1325282) and it sounds somewhat very familiar, but instead of "env={}" in /usr/share/ubuntu-drivers-common/detect/sl-modem.py there's "env=env". Removing "env=env" doesn't resolve the problem. Do you require additional information? To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/1865499/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
