No Sound while playing any media.

[ask_]

Hello, I am running Lubuntu on a HP pc with intel processor.

Upto half an hour ago, my speakers were running properly. But now they don't seem to work. I replaced speakers by headphones, and those are also not giving any output.

I wish to know how to check if sound card is not working.

I did an lspci and aplay -l and the sound card was listed in the output,is it possible that the sound card is damaged, even if it is detected?

I am not at all sure whether problem is at software level or at soundcard level.

Please help.

[Rex Bouwense]

So, half an hour ago (plus or minus) your speakers were working and then suddenly they stopped working. Can you get sound out of any program?

[ask_]

No , I am unable to get sound out of any program.

As you know (from another post where you helped me), I installed a new program system monitor, before I installed it they were working , after I installed it they have stopped working.

It may be a complete co-incidence, but I want to make sure whether this is not a software issue.

Since it happened in the recent past I think it may be because of a software/driver issue. I may be completely wrong and I may have to replace my sound card, but when I tried out aplay -l I got following output :-

aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC880 Analog [ALC880 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC880 Digital [ALC880 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Also I read some of the following thread,

A very common cause for a user to not have sound is not having his/her username in the /etc/group.

Thanks to rustybutt for this simple check.

grep 'audio' /etc/group

You should see a line similar to

audio:x:29:

followed by a username i.e. if the username is "ubuntu" then you should see

audio:x:29:ubuntu

. If you see something else i.e.

audio:x:29:root

you should add your username to the file by doing

 sudo nano /etc/group

. Now find the line that looks like

audio:x:29:root

and change it to

audio:x:29:root:moocow

only replacing moocow with your real username.

Hit CTRL + 0 to save, then CTRL + X to exit. That's the end of that

[/SIZE]

In my group file audio: x:29 was followed by 'pulse', I changed it to my username, but didn't get any positive results. I checked the first few steps of that guide but what they suggest is working fine on my system, i.e aplay -l is able to detect soundcard, Alsamixer shows all the volumes as unmuted.

[ask_]

update:

A funny thing is happening.

I checked the alsamixer settings. They were ok. Then I checked vlc media player settings, in it I changed the default output module to ALSA output module. Then I inserted a pair of headphones , lo and behold, I got sound in my headphones.

But, whenever I play youtube videos ,I am not getting any output.

This means at least soundcard is working. But why aren't youtube videos being played?

[Rex Bouwense]

Have you installed Ubuntu restricted extras?

[deadcatt]

whoop whoop finally i find a tread with the exact same problem i just rebooted my laptop and boom the sound was not working, it works with skype because i changed the audio device but like you ask_ i dont get any audio from youtube or any other application that does not have audio setting.
lspci and aplay -l shows my audio device just like yours.

im farly new to linux and dont have a clue what to do next! hope we get some answares


whats with the ubuntu restricted extras ?

[ask_]

Have you installed Ubuntu restricted extras?

Thanks for replying. Your help on some of my other threads was very useful.


One thing , I would like to point out, as I mentioned in first post,the sound was working fine till morning. All kinds of sound were well supported till then, be it flash/youtube or vlc media.

Then as I mentioned, sound went off , then I did that ALSA thing on vlc, and it is working well.

Do I still have to install Ubuntu restriced extras ? I mean is there a way to see if it is already installed ? For I was able to hear youtube earlier.

I have a hunch something is simply wrong with the flash settings,I maybe wrong here.I am not averse to trying out Ubuntu restricted extras, and will do so,it's just that I am afraid I may mess up with some codecs while installing.

[Rex Bouwense]

I have always had to install restricted extras for video and audio on U-Tube. It has always worked for me after I installed. Where are you located? The codecs are restricted in some countries.

There is a thread that you might be interested in reading since you are using Lubuntu:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1844755

[ask_]

I have always had to install restricted extras for video and audio on U-Tube. It has always worked for me after I installed. Where are you located? The codecs are restricted in some countries.

I am located in India.

But I was able to play all videos and sound successfully, till yesterday, so restriction must not be an issue in my country.

[ask_]

I tried to study a lot of stuff on ALSA and Pulse Audio, but the configuration settings , I wasn't able to understand, as there were many webpages dedicated to it. I simply didn't know what my problem required.

Then I came across the solution proposed in the following quote:-

I have a feeling either pulseaudio or chromium is remembering that you tried using HDMI audio and is staying on it. I would suggest downloading pavucontrol by either just clicking the name or typing this in a terminal

sudo apt-get install pavucontrol

After it installed, just run it using either Alt+F2 or a terminal and just type

pavucontrol

Now open up chromium and find wherever you can't hear sound and tell chromium using pavucontrol to use your speakers or whatever you use.

I did exactly as I was told to do there, and now flash is playing sound effortlessly.

I guess, since I am a beginner, what I needed was a simple GUI based tool, and that is what the solution in the quote provided.