I've probably got the same issue, running Steam on a 64 bit Gentoo installation with PulseAudio and without SELinux. In addition to all the facts reported by the OP, the Steam client crashes on my box whenever it tries to play a notification sound, e.g. if you click in the main window when a modal dialog is being displayed, or a chat window is open, but inactive, and a message is being received (see CrashIDs bp-c5381381-d3a1-42d6-a23f-1515e2141210 or bp-a5dd093e-2ea5-43ec-951d-280b32141210). These messages are the only audio-related lines in the output, only the first line will appear before the crashes, the second line additionally if I switch to Big Picture mode:
Failed to open digital audio driver No mixer services exist.
/home/buildbot/buildslave_steam/steam_rel_client_ubuntu12_linux/build/src/panorama/./uiengine.cpp (2590) : Assertion Failed: Failed Miles audio create for panorama UIEngine()
I'm running Steam with the following environment variables set:
SDL_AUDIODRIVER=pulse
force_s3tc_enable=true
PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=10
LC_ALL=C
Same for me, on Arch Linux 64-bit with PulseAudio.
I know it's super old, but I'm also experiencing this on a relatively new 64-bit install of Arch Linux. I'm using Pipewire instead of just Pulseaudio, however. Has anyone come up with a solution?
SDL_AUDIODRIVER=pulsex1 2014-12SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsax1 2014-12SDL_AUDIODRIVER=pulseaudio,x1 2014-12
I'm on openSUSE 13.1 x86_64, I'm not quite sure when it started but all audio from the client process itself stopped working, I'm still getting audio from the webhelper i.e. in trailer/videos on the store and I'm also still getting audio from all my games including TF2.
What does not work is Steam Music and the notification sounds as well as any sound from big picture mode. Also when I go into the audio settings in big picture all the dropdowns for Backend selection are empty.
My Default audio backend is alsa, but I also have a working pulseaudio server running along with that, I tried starting steam both with SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa and SDL_AUDIODRIVER=pulseaudio, the issue persists with both backends, either that or steam ignores the SDL audio backend preference.
ALSA is still on the version compatible with the steam runtime, so it's not related to that issue either it seems.
Running with the Steam Runtime disabled doesn't fix the problem either.
Another thing I've noticed is that Voice input seems to work just fine, both ALSA default and PulseAudio default give me audio readings when I hit the test microphone button.
I'm also not getting anything useful out of the terminal output, the only errors or warnings related to audio I'm getting is a ton of MPEGHeader errors, which I'm guessing comes from the audio crawler for Steam Music.
Steam Hardware Information: http://pastebin.com/rWjRdafh