To get practical tone, I test my audio trax matrix using Audacity on my home stereo by connecting the laptop HDMI port to the AudioVideo receiver-amplifier. This way everything I do on the laptop is echoed to the strereo (and the TV). All I need to do is launch the pulseaudio Volume-Control and then all sound gets echoed also. I play an audio track in VLC and I hear it on my stereo, woofer and all. It’s the typical Netflix setup.
But i cannot get Audacity output to follow this route. The pulse control shows “HDMI/DisplayPort 4 (plugged-in)” as the only available hdmi selection. I presume this means the (only) hdmi port on the laptop. Audacity on the other hand lists only HDMI ports 1,3 1,7 and 1,8 as options which do not do it, neither do the other customary iec958, spdif or default selections.
As it is I have to export the summed matrix to an audio file and play THAT in vlc, kindof a roundabout way that takes a lot of time.
I set it to default (there’s no ‘pulse’ option). The pulse Volume-Control window shows only the built-in analog stereo outputting actively and i can hear that in the laptop speakers. The HDMI (4) monitor remains silent. However, as i try to adjust the volume i can hear the big stereo speakers pop, so pulse ‘is’ outputting something to them but it’s not the Audacity output.