Speakers out on one side

[rook3]

Speakers, earbuds, etc... out on one side only. On multiple jacks. Pavumeter(with a test sound) and pavucontrol show signal, it's just not making it to one side of the output devices.

Newer(Obviously, this is the "Absolute Beginners Section"), so I'm unsure what other data would be useful. Here's a copy paste from lshw.

lshw.txt

[Vladlenin5000]

*Warning - dumb question ahead*: Have you checked the balance? (not possible to check that in your comprehensive - thanks, btw - list of hardware).

Check again anyway and while there slide it all the way to either sides. Does it confirm you have one channel only?

Your Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P uses an ubiquitous Realtek ALC889 HD audio codec; problems with this chipset in Linux, other than OS/external settings or hardware failure, are seldom reported.

[rook3]

@Vladlenin- No such things as dumb questions, I'm a self admitted absolute beginner

I assume that's what I checked in pavucontrol? Left and right are both at 100%, and pavumeter shows signals on both sides. I could be wrong though, this may just be "volume"; I'm not sure how to delineate "volume on both sides" vs. "balance".

[rook3]

New info:
Pulseaudio, pulseaudio-utils, pavumeter, pavucontrol are all installed.

Result of relevant alsa commands:
http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=2b...28da2febb3a1d4

Alsamixer shows 2 channels.

Updating/reinstalling alsa via [ ! -f './purgeconfig.sh' ] && wget http://purgeconfig.sf.net/purgeconfig.sh && sudo bash ./purgeconfig.sh alsa-base alsa-utils linux-sound-base libasound2

Next steps are to update/reinstall kernel, reset local settings via "rm -rf ~/.pulse* ~/.asound* ~/.pulse-cookie"? Is there anything else I can look for or try? Recommendations from folks in realtime is "try in a different computer/distro", which I'm unable to do easily.

[rook3]

Results of speaker-test version 1.0.27.2

speakertest.txt

I notice that it only lists one channel... Does this help me narrow things down?

[rook3]

REMOVED pulseaudio. speaker-test and audio still out on one side when tested through alsa.

The problem is not pulseaudio. It's either alsa or something simpler. I'm at the point as a beginner where it seems more likely I'll screw up my system than fix the problem, but I've tried a lot of different stuff found in google.

Not really sure I can test without alsa active Next step: Removal of alsa and testing on an OSS install? Is my logic sound?

[rook3]

Marking this as solved, even if it isn't completely. The most likely culprit is sound card, now, and I'm sick of trying to google this stuff.

Learned a bit about how alsa/pulseaudio/kernel works, and how to boot isos directly from HDD, so I guess it wasn't a complete loss.

For those that come later with similar issues:
I tried booting a livecd from different OSes, putting iso images of the distros in the /boot/grml folder. Hold shift at startup to enter grub, and boot the iso. If the sound is STILL bad, it's likely not ubuntu You can't INSTALL those distros to hard drive without being unable to unmount the hard drive, but you can test with them live.

For competent folks: Feel free to correct me if my logic is bad, or verify if this is likely.