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Accepted
Mohd Arafat Hossain
Asked: 2012-05-07 03:17:32 +0800 CST

No sound in Ubuntu except at log in

  • 772

I installed Ubuntu 12.04 a month ago and am using it till now. I failed to notice that all this time there was no sound at all while running Ubuntu, even while playing a game in Wine. The weird thing is that only the startup sound comes when I log in (Indian/African drum tone), then comes the utter silence.

I tested both Digital Output (S/PDIF) and the speakers in the sound settings but can hear nothing.

Any help?

pulseaudio

15 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    After searching, I have found a simple answer. Just execute 

    killall pulseaudio

    Your speakers should work fine now. To ensure this, test the sound stack in System Settings > Sound > Test Sound (Speaker test, Not Digital Output (S/PDIF) test)

    • 14

  2. Sometimes the problem is that alsa somehow got muted. Open a terminal and type:

    alsamixer

    AlsaMixer

    and disable Auto-Mute Mode. The mute can be toggled with the M key.

    • 10

  3. Try

    killall pulseaudio

    and go to System Settings → Sound → Output tab → Connector → Analog Output

    This solved it for me.

    • 4

  4. killall pulseaudio wasn't working for me. My issue was that I was not in the sound group.

    Run 

    gpasswd -a yourusername audio

    Then do

    killall pulseaudio

    That worked for me.

    • 4

  5. Type alsamixer in the terminal.

    Press F6 to select sound card and try switching to HDA Intel if available or something else apart from Nvidia. You might also want to increase a few settings that are low a little bit, like Mic and Mic boost.

    Restart any application that might be running. This helped me enable skype sounds and hear the ringer.

    If you check Applications > Multimedia > Pulseaudio Volume Control; in Output devices there should only be one device.

    Hope this helps. Worked for me in Xubuntu 12.04.

    • 4

  6. Possible Fix

    Remove the hidden .pulseaudio folder, log out and log back in. This might help in getting back the sound.

    Just in case you don't know where .pulseaudio folder (pulse in case of modern versions), open Terminal Ctrl+Alt+T and type the following code

    mv ~/.config/pulse ~/.config/old_pulse

    It just renames the 'pulse' folder to 'old_pulse'. Do reboot your PC so that the folder can be recreated with default configurations.

    • 4

  7. Just in case nothing of the above works - check that the issue is not with the amplifier. I eventually plugged in another computer, and still silence.

    Moving the cable to a different HDMI input of the amplifier did the trick. Who knows what is wrong with "HDMI3", but I can live with that. :-)

    • 2

  8. A a possible fix:

    12.04 sound problem fixed

    if 11.10 was ok for you, just use the 11.10 kernel, i used 3.0.0.20, check the link.

    AND after that if you still don't hear anything do this steps:

    SystemSettings -> Sound -> (Select output) SPEAKERS, NOT HDMI..

    (what is worng with this Ubuntu dev guys... I never used HDMI output, make that setting seccondary, let me hunt how to enable when i need that crap... J)

    P.S. what do you think fossfreedom is this post ok? comments should also be left, are the only feedback to developers, if they care.

    • 1

  9. You do not need to install a new kernel. You can install only another version of ALSA. You can try this https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-audio-dev/+archive/alsa-daily/+packages daily build repositary of ALSA.

    • 1

  10. I did the following. Try it:

    1. Open terminal and typed alsamixer.

    2. Press a few tabs or F5 so you can see all the options.

    3. Now with your arrow keys go to loopback and enable it

    .

    • 1