How to fix the Teamspeak Audio mute problem on Linux

In this article, I’m gonna show you how to fix tix the TeamSpeak Audio mute problem on Linux. It has been tested on my machine, you can see details below.

Part	Model
Operating System	OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
Desktop Environment	KDE Plasma 5.20.4
Host	X470 AORUS ULTRA GAMING
Kernel	5.10.1-1-default
Window Manager	KWin
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 2600 (12) @ 3.400GHz
GPU	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
PulseAudio Version	14.0-rebootstrapped

The problem

When using TeamSpeak on Linux, you may have experienced this issue: Starting TeamSpeak mutes certain applications, such as Spotify or VLC. This is pretty annoying, especially while gaming, since you constantly have to tab out of your game, open the volume control applet and unmute the application, only to see it getting muted later. This is not a solution, so let’s fix it.

The fix

Fixing this is pretty straight forward (See the OpenSUSE Wiki). All you have to do is commenting out the line load-module module-role-cork in /etc/pulse/default.pa. If you know what you’re doing, cou can do this yourself, but I’ll give step-by-step instructions below.

Using KDE Kate

1. Hit [Alt] + [Space].
2. Enter kdesu kate /etc/pulse/default.pa and hit [Enter].
3. Search for the line saying “load-module module-role-cork” (Hint: Use [Ctrl] + [F])
4. Put a # in front of it. It should look now look like the following:

   ### Cork music/video streams when a phone stream is active
   # load-module module-role-cork
   

5. Save the file ([Ctrl] + [S]) and close the window.
6. Open krunner by pressing [Alt] + [Space] and type pulseaudio -k && pulseaudio --start [Enter].

Using GNOME gedit:

1. Open a terminal window.
2. Start a root session. On Ubuntu/Debian based systems, I recommend using sudo bash, on SUSE/RHEL based systems use su -. Enter the required password, if you are prompted to.
3. Edit the file /etc/pulse/default.pa. For doing so, type: gedit /etc/pulse/default.pa
4. Search for the line saying “load-module module-role-cork”
5. Put a # in front of it. It should look now look like the following:

   ### Cork music/video streams when a phone stream is active
   # load-module module-role-cork
   

6. Save the file ([Ctrl] + [S]) and close the window.
7. Exit the root session by typing exit.
8. Kill the PulseAudio Server: pulseaudio -k
9. Start it again: pulseaudio --start

Using the terminal (universal method)

1. Open a terminal window. On KDE Plasma, this is done by opening the Kickstarter Menu and searching for “Konsole”.
2. Start a root session. On Ubuntu/Debian based systems, I recommend using sudo -s, on SUSE/RHEL based systems use su -. Enter the required password, if you are prompted to.
3. Edit the file /etc/pulse/default.pa. For doing so, type: vim /etc/pulse/default.pa
4. Search for the line saying “load-module module-role-cork”. For doing so, enter a /and the line afterwards, so /load-module module-role-cork. See this wiki entry for more help regarding searching in VIM.
5. Enter editing mode by hitting the key i on the keyboard. Now you will be able to edit the text file.
6. Now out comment the line by putting a # in front of it. It should now look like the following:

   ### Cork music/video streams when a phone stream is active
   # load-module module-role-cork
   

7. Now hit escape in order to exit editing mode and type :wq and hit Enter. This will save the file and exit vim.
8. End the root session by using exit.
9. Kill the PulseAudio Server: pulseaudio -k
10. Start it again: pulseaudio --start

Sources

• TeamSpeak Forum
• Fix in OpenSUSE Wiki
• Arch Wiki

Further Reading

• Vim Documentation
• Vim Guide in Gentoo Wiki
• PulseAudio in OpenSUSE Wiki

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