The Toshiba Satellite A-305 S6916 laptop has six semi-touch buttons above the keyboard. The 'buttons' are capacitative touch areas which toggle on and off. They are back-lit when on, dark when off.
The buttons are audio controls -- mute, media, play, stop, back and next. When I touch the 'mute' button to disable it, it goes off for about half a second, then comes back on.
There is also a volume dial on the front of the laptop. When I scroll the dial, I see the software volume slider supposedly moving the volume up and down, but I get no sound.
If I start Rhythmbox and change the volume using the slider on the front of the laptop, Rhythmbox locks up.
I've hard booted the laptop; that didn't help.
I've had the laptop for a couple of years, and I've never had trouble with the sound before. I'm not exactly sure when the problem started, I don't do a whole lot that involves audio.
┌───────────────────────────── AlsaMixer v1.0.22 ──────────────────────────────┐
│ Card: HDA Intel F1: Help │
│ Chip: Realtek ALC268 F2: System information │
│ View: F3:[Playback] F4: Capture F5: All F6: Select sound card │
│ Item: Master [dB gain: 0.00] Esc: Exit │
│ │
│ ┌──┐ ┌──┐ ┌──┐ ┌──┐ ┌──┐ ┌──┐ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ │ │▒▒│ │ │ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ │ │▒▒│ │ │ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ │ │▒▒│ │ │ >
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ │ │▒▒│ │ │ >
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ │ │▒▒│ │ │ >
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ │ │▒▒│ │ │ >
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ │ │▒▒│ │ │ >
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ │ │▒▒│ │ │ >
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ │ │▒▒│ │ │ >
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ │ │▒▒│ │ │ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ │ │▒▒│ │ │ │
│ ├──┤ ├──┤ ├──┤ └──┘ └──┘ └──┘ ┌──┐ ┌──┐ │
│ │MM│ │MM│ │MM│ │OO│ │OO│ │
│ └──┘ └──┘ └──┘ └──┘ └──┘ │
│ 100 100<>100 100<>100 0<>0 100<>100 0<>0 │
│ < Master >Headphon Speaker PCM Front Mi Mic Boos S/PDIF S/PDIF D │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
I turned up the Master and Speaker volume in alsamixer, but that didn't help... the mute button is still enabled.
I also verified that the youtube video that I was watching actually did have audio ;-)
This issue is similar to https://askubuntu.com/questions/119678/sound-muted-in-milliseconds-after-unmute, although I can't even hear 100ms worth of sound, even when I do hit the unmute button. I do see the light turn off and on again though.
I also tried plugging in earphones; that didn't help.
I started working through the procedure at help.ubuntu.com; once I got through part 1, (which involves pasting a mess of apt-get commands, and rebooting), I was able to un-mute the laptop successfully. The mute 'button' still appears to be activated, but alsamixer shows that it is not:
(Note that the 'mute' indicator for
<Master>is now set to00rather thanMM)I've verified that I can hear audio on YouTube.