USB Soundcard suddenly stopped working - Mint 19 Cinnamon

[cowardlybattlecat]

Hello, all,

I recently installed linux Mint 19 on my system with Windows 10 on a different disk.

My sound had been working and then exactly this occurred:

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2263276

My experience matches that of the first two posts in that thread precisely.

I went to see about making the max volume louder somehow (everything works fine and at higher volume in Windows). When I quickly clicked on one of the other output options, the ability to select my headphones disappeared from the sound settings panel.

When I opened alsamixer in terminal, I was able to press F6 to see the list of sound cards, including mine as sound card 2. Selecting it closes alsamixer and gives the following in terminal:

cannot load mixer controls: Invalid argument

I installed qasmixer based on a suggestion found online. When I select mixer device "hw: card" then my card from the list, I get:

"
Mixer device couldn't be opened
Function: snd_mixer_load
Address: hw:CARD=2
Error: Invalid argument
"

Details:
headphones are Steelseries Siberia 650, which come with their own external sound card (these: https://steelseries.com/gaming-headsets/siberia-650 )

Seems like my system recognizes the card/headphones are there, but something is missing/got deleted such that alsamixer/qasmixer/sound settings can't select the sound card.

I pretty confused and not certain how to fix it. I have tried quite a few things, so I'm not certain which to describe here. I would have necro-posted on the linked thread, but it's closed. As far as I can tell, those two users had precisely the same issue I have now.

I'm not even certain if this is the correct forum since I am a Mint user (not exactly ubuntu but based on it), but the given that the problem is _precisely_ what was described by the folks in the thread, I figured I would give it a shot. Any help is greatly appreciated!

[wildmanne39]

Thread moved to MINT for a more appropriate fit.

[cowardlybattlecat]

I marked the thread as solved.

Here is the solution that worked to solve my primary problem.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=134232

As detailed in the linked thread, qasmixer and alsamixer still can't access any sort of config for the card, but the sound is working.