Ubuntu 16.04 LTS - sound disappearing, 'Dummy Output' device appearing

[matti777]

Hi, last week I finally updated my 14.04 LTS system to 16.04. Right after the update I noticed this highly annoying issue with audio; it keeps disappearing. When I check the Sound Settings, I notice a output device called 'Dummy Output' has appeared and is selected. If I select my real audio device (and, possibly, stop/resume my audio source) the audio continues to play. This appears to occur at random intervals (anything from 5 minutes to an hour or so).

Exact steps to reproduce (well, on my system..):


Starts watching a movie (tried Movies, vlc, SMPlayer)
After a random amount of time the sound disappears, movie keeps playing
Taking a look to Sound Settings.. I notice an incorrect output device called Dummy Output has appeared and is selected (see screenshot)
I select the correct device and possibly stop/play the video player
Audio resumes properly


http://777-team.org/~matti/tmp/audio_screenshot.png

This is the output for aplay -l:



**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: ALC892 Digital [ALC892 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0



Any ideas appreciated.

- Matti

[1fallen]

Well not sure i can help much here but this will help me and maybe others here that can help.
Post back the output of this in the terminal

inxi -AG
This will show the devices again along with drivers that are installed.
By the way pulseaudio is very buggy on this version...craps out quite a bit for me as well as others.
I usually have good results with:

killall pulseaudio && pulseaudio --start
and you may have to run those as single commands.

[SuperFreak]

I had problems with my HDMI not working this may help

I solved in this way:
sudo gedit /etc/pulse/default.pa
commented this line --> load-module module-switch-on-port-available
Saved
Switched my headphone jack from front-panel to back motherboard port and then reboot. Now it works fine.

https://ubuntuforums.org/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=13476849