I recently plugged an audio amplifier into my PC to be able to use my headphones.
Once I plugged it in, the device appeared as normal in the sound settings but as soon as I plugged it in the video I was watching stopped playing and resumed as soon as I unplugged it again.
I havent plugged it back in since but my computer has started acting strange. FireDragin is constantly freezing and needs to be terminated (This is always on the same pages no matter how many times I restart my PC).
And it has also stopped recognising my Steam controller both plugged in and via wireless.
Is there a way to fix the problem or to get my PC back to how it was beforee I plugged this amp in?
I have done all the updates I can and restarted multiple times.
What do you mean an amplifier? You mean a USB interface?
This just sounds like your sink is changing and any application that was using the previous sink dies and vice versa.
If you plan on always using the device you will need to set up alsa/pulse for it. This is kind of an order of operations issue where in you want to make sure all your things are set on boot (or login) before applications launch and can choose the wrong sink/interface.
Pipewire is installed by default and I don't have a lot of experience with it. I nuke it asap in fact. I always set up alsa > pulse > jack for my audio interface but it takes a bit of knowing what goes where for your hardware to work out. (My workstation is a DAW/AV machine)
I can say more but without more info from you it may be a lot of hooey. You need to give some info on what this "amp" is, what your audio devices are and how you want to use them or need them set up.
It won't be the distros that dislike it so much as Linux audio is something you have to dedicate some learning to once you stray from basic. Sadly Linux audio is a small nightmare in general and a tad worse now with the entrance of Pipewire. I hope Pipewire will slowly fix this but for now it's yet another half baked fighter entering the fray. What was supposed to be a one man show is more like an arena brawl.
Sadly again I need some real info. What does dmesg show when you plug it in? Can you select it with alsamixer?
Just as an aside about the lockups KDE is a kitchen sink DE. This means everything has some audio beep, boop feedback for things. If you plug the USB audio in and the sink switches all the DE elements that want to make said beeps and boops will hang or have issues as the audio interface they registered with is gone.
The next update won't do what you think it might. YOU have to deal with this, not wait for some magic update. However you still haven't given dmesg for the device or said if alsamixer sees it. This really screams damsel in distress. i.e. you expect some magic to rescue you rather than to learn or make any effort so I'll bit you adieu and good luck with that.
[ 240.133036] usb 3-3: new full-speed USB device number 3 using xhci_hcd
[ 240.339688] usb 3-3: New USB device found, idVendor=1852, idProduct=7022, bcdDevice= 0.01
[ 240.339694] usb 3-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[ 240.339696] usb 3-3: Product: DigiHug USB Audio
[ 240.339698] usb 3-3: Manufacturer: FiiO
[ 240.409925] input: FiiO DigiHug USB Audio as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:07.1/0000:0a:00.3/usb3/3-3/3-3:1.0/0003:1852:7022.000E/input/input26
[ 240.462222] hid-generic 0003:1852:7022.000E: input,hidraw9: USB HID v1.00 Device [FiiO DigiHug USB Audio] on usb-0000:0a:00.3-3/input0
[ 240.488972] mc: Linux media interface: v0.10
[ 240.817921] usbcore: registered new interface driver snd-usb-audio
And it is recognised in alsamixer as default:2 DigiHub USB Audio