Sound broke overnight

[cole.mickens]

So, my sound stopped working, seemingly overnight. I'm guessing it's PulseAudio. I have my xbox piped in through the line in and enabled via alsamixer and I can always hear that (as I expect), but my other applications: Nada. I heard the KDE login sound (ugh) and then nothing. No VLC, nothing from Chrome, Clementine doesn't play, and in fact doesn't even progress through the song (the same behavior it exhibited when I had PulseAudio directed to a bad output device).


So, is there anything I can check on?

[craig10x]

I'm getting the same...no sound on videos, streaming radio in Google Chrome...no sound on VLC media player either when i play videos...
I believe there was a pulse audio update yesterday or today...and that seems to have knocked it out...

Update: i re-booted and got sound back for google chrome stuff (radio steams, Streaming video, etc)
However, when i opened VLC media player, no sound there and then when i went back to Chrome again, knocked the sound out for that again...
So, as long as i boot up and don't go to VLC to play videos, i am fine, but once i do, it borks the Chrome sound as well...

Seems to be from the pulse audio updates which we received yesterday, i believe...

So far, we are the only ones posting about it...it seems that whatever came in those updates make it so that if you should open vlc and play a video, the sound gets knocked out on vlc and also then knocks it out for any sound on your web browser as well...Only re-booting will restore the sound to the browser, but then you can't dare go to open a video in vlc again because it will knock out the sound COMPLETELY for everything....

[cole.mickens]

I'm getting the same...no sound on videos, streaming radio in Google Chrome...no sound on VLC media player either when i play videos...
I believe there was a pulse audio update yesterday or today...and that seems to have knocked it out...

Update: i re-booted and got sound back for google chrome stuff (radio steams, Streaming video, etc)
However, when i opened VLC media player, no sound there and then when i went back to Chrome again, knocked the sound out for that again...
So, as long as i boot up and don't go to VLC to play videos, i am fine, but once i do, it borks the Chrome sound as well...

Seems to be from the pulse audio updates which we received yesterday, i believe...

So far, we are the only ones posting about it...it seems that whatever came in those updates make it so that if you should open vlc and play a video, the sound gets knocked out on vlc and also then knocks it out for any sound on your web browser as well...Only re-booting will restore the sound to the browser, but then you can't dare go to open a video in vlc again because it will knock out the sound COMPLETELY for everything....

I thought that I had had something similar as well, but I tried rebooting and couldn't get Clementine or Chrome to work, even whilst avoiding VLC.

I'll just wait a few days and hope PulseAudio gets an update or start bug hunting on Launchpad I guess.

[craig10x]

Yeah..i guess i will have to do the same

Well, i don't know if it will help, but try avoiding going into any media player and see if re-booting at least brings back the sound for stuff on your browser anyway...

Hope some updates over the next few days will correct it...
let me know if you discover any fixes along the way...

Funny part was i was just thinking how smooth the updates were going so far since installing 13.04...

[cole.mickens]

Yeah..i guess i will have to do the same

Well, i don't know if it will help, but try avoiding going into any media player and see if re-booting at least brings back the sound for stuff on your browser anyway...

Hope some updates over the next few days will correct it...
let me know if you discover any fixes along the way...

Funny part was i was just thinking how smooth the updates were going so far since installing 13.04...

Yeah, I don't mind some breakage this early on, comes with the territory.

This time when I restarted, I get sound from TF2. I'm afraid to open VLC though.

[craig10x]

I have an interesting update for you...

I get the impression that the updates broke the vlc media player in that if you try to play a video, you get no sound and then it also breaks the sound on everything else (like on the web browser when you try to listen to stream radio or watch a streaming video)...

However, i can play mp3s in VLC and the sound is fine and it doesn't break the sound on the entire system...

And...I can play VIDEOS on Totem Movie Player (the one ubuntu includes by default) and the Video Plays fine and the SOUND is fine ON THE VIDEO and it then DOES NOT BREAK the sound on everything else...

So....as long as i don't try to play a video on VLC...everything else is NORMAL....

Which means i can play mp3s on VLC or watch a video on Totem and no sound breakage...

I can ALSO PLAY MP3s on Rhythmbox and the sound is fine and it does NOT break the sound on everything else...

Weird bug we got...isn't it?

See if your behavior matches what i got on my computer...On mine, the only thing that triggers it off is trying to play a video on VLC...

PS: I wonder if it would help to re-install VLC in the Package Manager..haven't tried that...wasn't sure if it would be a good move or not...

Other than that, i guess i'd have to see if any updates come down for pulse audio...otherwise, i will just have to stick to Totem for playing videos...i am planning on fresh installing 13.04 upon final release...I'm currently dual booting 13.04 with 12.10 (for a safety back up....lol)
and when final released, i am going to wipe everything, and just install 13.04 alone...

[cariboo907]

To help in making a good bug report, you may want to look at the Sound debugging wiki page.

[sandeep.prasad30]

Yes.. Even i am facing this issue since update in morning. Not sure why this is occuring..

[pressureman]

I noticed this problem yesterday too. You don't need to do a full reboot. You can just kill pulseaudio and wait for it to respawn a few seconds later, and then your sound should work again.

kill `pidof pulseaudio`

[zika]

I noticed this problem yesterday too. You don't need to do a full reboot. You can just kill pulseaudio and wait for it to respawn a few seconds later, and then your sound should work again.

kill `pidof pulseaudio`

Or ask pulseaudio to do that

pulseaudio --kill

...
Check also Your config files in ~/.pulse (if You have them) I think that some switches got changed...