No Sound

[johnmata]

I have a Ratel Value system from System 76

Suddenly I have no sound. When I select system -> preferences -> sound a small window pops up that says "Waiting for sound system to respond", the little window will stay there until i select the only option, "cancel". i also notice that there is no longer a speaker icon on the desktop taskbar. when i try to play an MP3 file there are no errors, just no sound, and the volume selections are grayed out.

the system does seem to recognize the sound card:

john@king:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: ATI HDMI [ATI HDMI]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: VT82xx [HDA VIA VT82xx], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: VT82xx [HDA VIA VT82xx], device 1: AD198x Digital [AD198x Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Kind regards,
John Mata

[thomasaaron]

First, go to System > Administration > System76 Driver and click the Install tab and the Install button.

When the driver finishes running, reboot.

I'm not sure if that will fix it, but it's the proper first step.

Your speaker icon is missing... Do you see your networking icon? I'm wondering if the "Notification Area" applet got removed.

[johnmata]

i tried reinstalling the system76 drivers last night, i also performed a system76 restore. the problem remains. i still have my other icons, such as the network icon. any other ideas?

thanks,
john

[thomasaaron]

Could you try booting from a 9.04 or 9.10 live CD? When you do, make sure PCM is turned way up.

Do you have sound there?

If not, we're probably dealing with a hardware issue.

[johnmata]

i booted up to 9.10 and had sound. i played a CD, no problem.

when i try to play the same cd when i booted back into my normal setting i got an error that said:

"Error playing CD.

Reason: GStreamer error: state change failed and some element failed to post proper error message with the reason for the failure."

any help is immensely appreciated!

cheers,
john

[thomasaaron]

OK, go to a terminal and run...

gstreamer-properties

...and make sure its set up like the attached screenshot.

[johnmata]

upon opening the gstreamer-properties the proper plugins were already chosen. however, under default input next to "device" the drop down is grayed out and the reads "none"

[thomasaaron]

It looks like you've run into some sort of bug. But I'm not seeing it across the board. There's not a lot of info on that error message online.

Did you install anything sound-related (software, plugins, codecs, etc...) prior to the problem?

Also, please run...

gnome-volume-control

...from a terminal. This is the same thing as going to System > Prefs > Sound. Since that will not start, let's see if it throws any useful error messages in the terminal.

[johnmata]

i tried running said command in the terminal with the following result:

** (gnome-volume-control:3152): WARNING **: Connection failed, reconnecting...

over and over again this message.

shall i reinstall ubuntu?

[thomasaaron]

OK, that was somewhat helpful. At lease we know others are experiencing it as well...

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=...9483403d199a5c

Try running...

sudo apt-get remove pavucontrol

...and then rebooting.

Re-installing would definitely fix it. But if you want to keep tinkering with it, I think we can at least find some more leads.