Sound troubleshooting

[kevin34ct]

Ok so I read the guides, and it doesn't have anything on my problem. When I am playing back sound, any sound, be it games, music or movies, my sound randomly gets loud then it will get soft. It happens with my speakers. I am using on-board sound which uses the ALC888 sound device. (Nvidia chipset). I haven't tried it with headphones plugged into the speaker jacks because I use Bluetooth headphones which don't have this problem. I'm still new at Linux so I will need some instructions on what to get for you, and what to do.

[spiritofcat]

I've just bought a new PC and I'm trying to migrate my Ubuntu 10.04 installation over to it.
I've chosen to do this instead of just starting with a fresh 12.04 install since I've got a lot of things already set up the way I want them on 10.04 and I don't want to go through the drama of getting everything set up from scratch again.

I've used Clonezilla to clone the hard drive from the old machine to the new one, and for the most part it's working well.

The only problem I've noticed is that the onboard sound card of the new machine is not reporting for duty.

I've read through both the guides linked at the start of this thread, and followed the first one but with no success. The second one seems to be only for 12.04 so I'm not sure how much help it can be to me.

Working with the first guide, I've become stuck with

sudo aplay -l

always returning

aplay: device_list:223: no soundcards found...

I've run the big command in procedure Ac:

echo "Sound cards recognized by the system:"; lspci -nn | grep --color=none '\[04[80][13]\]'; echo "Sound cards recognized by ALSA:"; lspci -nn | grep '\[04[80][13]\]' | while read line; do lspci -nnk | grep -A 3 '\[04[80][13]\]' | grep -e 'Kernel modules: ..*' -e '\[04[80][13]\]' | grep --color=none -F "$line"; done; echo "Sound cards recognized by ALSA, and activated:"; lspci -nn | grep '\[04[80][13]\]' | while read line; do lspci -nnk | grep -A 3 '\[04[80][13]\]' | grep -e 'Kernel drivers in use: ..*' -e '\[04[80][13]\]' | grep --color=none -F "$line"; done

And received this output:

Sound cards recognized by the system:00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:1e20] (rev 04)
Sound cards recognized by ALSA:
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:1e20] (rev 04)
Sound cards recognized by ALSA, and activated:
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:1e20] (rev 04)

but when I run

sudo aplay -l

I still get:

aplay: device_list:223: no soundcards found...

I've tried rebooting, I've tried removing, purging and reinstalling alsa and pulse. Nothing has worked.
I've used the Try Ubuntu feature from a 12.04 installation USB stick, and sound works there, so there's nothing wrong with my sound card or my speakers.

Anyone got any more things for me to try?


Edit: Solved it!

10.04 is EOL and relatively ancient compared to your hardware. You need to try a newer kernel for updated sound modules: http://askubuntu.com/questions/47796...t-kernel#47797

Thanks!

I ran

sudo apt-get install linux-image-generic-lts-backport-oneiric

and

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic-lts-backport-oneiric

And once those were complete an Update Manager popped up with a bunch of packages to update.
I let it update all those packages and now I'm going to reboot and see if I've got sound.

Edit:
I'm back after rebooting, aplay -l now lists some devices, and after I un-muted it in the mixer, my speakers work!
Thanks for the help!

Ok so I read the guides, and it doesn't have anything on my problem. When I am playing back sound, any sound, be it games, music or movies, my sound randomly gets loud then it will get soft. It happens with my speakers. I am using on-board sound which uses the ALC888 sound device. (Nvidia chipset). I haven't tried it with headphones plugged into the speaker jacks because I use Bluetooth headphones which don't have this problem. I'm still new at Linux so I will need some instructions on what to get for you, and what to do.

This happened to me on my windows PC and it turned out that it was a problem with my speakers. The volume control hardware of my speakers was dying and the way I solved it was by buying a new set of speakers.

[marinecomm]

I was troubleshooting my sound issues with spotify when all of a sudden the pulseaudio button disappeared. When I go to Applications Menu -> Multimedia -> Pulseaudio Volume Control I get the following error message:

Fatal Error: Unable to connect to Pulseaudio: OK

I have verified that pulseaudio is installed but is not running. How do I get pulseaudio up and running again?

[Yellow Pasque]

Sometimes, the pulse configuration gets screwed up. Try:

rm -r ~/.pulse*; pulseaudio -k

[marinecomm]

I get the following error message:

E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Failed to kill daemon: No such process

[Yellow Pasque]

@marinecomm: i'm just going to use your thread since you started one.

[marinecomm]

I can get sound in my headphones and that it. Besies, it's shoddy quality at that.

[marinecomm]

Update: I have sound now even in Spotify. Now my only issue is that whenever I restart the computer the sound volume starts out really low and I have to open the Pulseaudio Volume Control to turn it up.

[sb1966]

Hi all, I have a similar problem. I had Ubuntu 10.04 in Dell inspiron N5010 and both my built-in speakers were working perfectly. Yesterday I have installed Ubuntu 12.04LTs and now my left speaker is not working at all. I have tried all the alsa plugins from software center and synaptic manager, but not getting any result. Pl. help. Thanks in advance.

[HousieMousie2]

Some strangeness here:

Installed fresh 13.04 from cd. No sound.
Deleted . files in home dir. No sound.
Booted to Guest log in... sound ONCE (the start-up tones - Kubuntu.) No other sounds and none since, including the start-up tones.

I have run through a few different guides, and out-puts look fine (to my untrained eye anyway).
I have no idea where to go from here.

aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: CONEXANT Analog [CONEXANT Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

lspci -v | grep -A7 -i "audio"
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device ff1e
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 44
        Memory at d6700000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])

pacmd
Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information.
>>> list-sinks
1 sink(s) available.
  * index: 0
        name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo>
        driver: <module-alsa-card.c>
        flags: HARDWARE HW_MUTE_CTRL HW_VOLUME_CTRL DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY DYNAMIC_LATENCY
        state: SUSPENDED
        suspend cause: IDLE 
        priority: 9959
        volume: 0: 100% 1: 100%
                0: 0.00 dB 1: 0.00 dB
                balance 0.00
        base volume: 100%
                     0.00 dB
        volume steps: 65537
        muted: no
        current latency: 0.00 ms
        max request: 0 KiB
        max rewind: 0 KiB
        monitor source: 0
        sample spec: s16le 2ch 48000Hz
        channel map: front-left,front-right
                     Stereo
        used by: 0
        linked by: 0
        configured latency: 0.00 ms; range is 0.50 .. 341.33 ms
        card: 0 <alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1b.0>
        module: 4
        properties:
                alsa.resolution_bits = "16"
                device.api = "alsa"
                device.class = "sound"
                alsa.class = "generic"
                alsa.subclass = "generic-mix"
                alsa.name = "CONEXANT Analog"
                alsa.id = "CONEXANT Analog"
                alsa.subdevice = "0"
                alsa.subdevice_name = "subdevice #0"
                alsa.device = "0"
                alsa.card = "0"
                alsa.card_name = "HDA Intel"
                alsa.long_card_name = "HDA Intel at 0xd6700000 irq 44"
                alsa.driver_name = "snd_hda_intel"
                device.bus_path = "pci-0000:00:1b.0"
                sysfs.path = "/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0"
                device.bus = "pci"
                device.vendor.id = "8086"
                device.vendor.name = "Intel Corporation"
                device.product.name = "82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller"
                device.form_factor = "internal"
                device.string = "front:0"
                device.buffering.buffer_size = "65536"
                device.buffering.fragment_size = "32768"
                device.access_mode = "mmap+timer"
                device.profile.name = "analog-stereo"
                device.profile.description = "Analog Stereo"
                device.description = "Built-in Audio Analog Stereo"
                alsa.mixer_name = "Conexant CX20585"
                alsa.components = "HDA:14f15069,1179fde0,00100302"
                module-udev-detect.discovered = "1"
                device.icon_name = "audio-card-pci"
        ports:
                analog-output: Analog Output (priority 9900, latency offset 0 usec, available: unknown)
                        properties:

        active port: <analog-output>
>>>

speaker-test

speaker-test 1.0.25

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 1 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 192 to 2097152
Period size range from 64 to 699051
Using max buffer size 2097152
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 524288
was set buffer_size = 2097152
 0 - Front Left
Time per period = 11.367240

^It goes on for a while, repeating the Front Left... but there is no sound.

I would be grateful for any help!