BorgLabs - Kate Draven composed on 2021-04-23 02:02 (UTC-0400):
I activate sound on my ati card to hdmi for all outputs (mplayer, vlc, FF, etc) using pasystray. Just make sure you're choosing the correct hdmi output. Some ATI have more than one.
Also examine your settings in Pavucontrol carefully. Make sure digital output stuff isn't on (see attached images). Note how some are labeled and unplugged.
I don't understand this "make sure digital output 'stuff' isn't on". I don't expect to use any kind of analog audio "stuff" when I have an HDMI cable, which is all digital AFAIK, carrying sound to display speakers. Those gigantic images of mousetype didn't do much besides look like a negative of what I had before making things big enough to see, mainly just confirming I had the right window open. I don't get dark themes at all, but the Mac look is kinda cool. Where is that theming from? I'm not sure what exactly fixed it, because of unguessable consequences of too many settings to pick from. I installed pasystray, and uninstalled trinity-kmix, but that wasn't enough. I poked around logging in and out after changing this and that, and eventually I managed to unmute whatever made it mute amongst PA settings. I sure wish there was a way to locate whatever it is to make a new installation default to mute, because I see more muted KMix icons than not. Maybe this pasystray I never heard of before will make easier. Thanks Kate! :)