Kubuntu Audio Problem

[FernandoHernandez]

I don't know if this is an Ubuntu problem or KDE problem, but...

I don't know what happened, but I have a guess at least...yesterday, I put my computer into hibernation with a few programs open because I was in a hurry...one of them was VLC; I had a video paused when I went into hibernation. When I booted back into it, my audio wasn't working for anything...system sounds, programs, Flash video online, etc.

I went into the sound options and noticed that the 'test' button was giving me sound for HDA Intel (ALC268 Analog) but not for Pulse audio...well, for a while now, my programs tells me 'HDA Intel not working, falling back on Pulse Audio' or some such thing...which is why it's so odd that HDA Intel is working when I click 'test' in the options but Pulse isn't. But it still falls back on Pulse for every program, and since Pulse isn't giving me any sound......I'm not getting audio and I don't know how to fix it. HDA Intel hasn't been working properly for a while, but again, falling back on Pulse still worked so I was always too lazy to learn how to fix that.

Oddly enough, I did manage to get it working again with Amarok...at first nothing was outputting sound, but now Amarok is working again. But that's it - nothing in VLC, YouTube isn't making sound, no Pidgin IM noises, no startup and shutdown sounds, nothing. It's very baffling.

Is there something I can do to fix this issue? Anyone have any ideas why it might be doing this in the first place? All I know is that when I booted back in from hibernation, my volume controls were muted and my internet wouldn't let me connect and said 'networking disabled'. I had to restart to get that working again and I thought nothing of it until I noticed I had no audio. I don't know what happened, why, or most importantly how to fix it...I just know it's very very frustrating to not be able to get audio working!!

Can someone help me? Please dumb it down as much as you possibly can (IE give specific terminal commands, packages to fix/install, settings to go into, etc).

[sdimhoff]

Hi Fernando-

I've got one thing for you to try and I'm hoping that you are experiencing an issue that I recently ran into. I use gentoo, but it is a problem that could affect ubuntu as well. After my last big upgrade of software I was having spotty sound issues. Eventually I realized that my sound server was not properly mixing (if it was hardware or software mixing I'm unsure).

This is how the problem works: If a program uses the sound server, it does not let anything else use the sound server. So if I had amarok running in the background (even if it was not playing anything) it took over the sound server and would not let my browser, mplayer, vlc, etc. use it simultaneously. Luckily this is an easy problem to diagnose and fix, if in fact this is what is happening.

Diagnosis:
1.) Kill any programs that might be controlling the sound server.
2.) Open one program and try to play something.
3.) If it is playing, now try to open a new program and play something else.
4.) If the new program does not play anything, give it a try in reverse (Kill both programs, play something with program 2 then try program 1)

If only one of them can handle anything at once, but each works independently then I fixed it by typing the following into my terminal.

Fix:


#alsaconf

This will take you through a series of questions and afterward my sound was fixed.

I hope this is the, otherwise maybe we can work it out on a second go round.

Good luck!

[Route]

I'm afraid I don't have an answer to this one, the last time I did a distro update it temporarily unbroke it... but the error has risen like a phoenix from the ashes. I found that muting and unmuting all of the chanels occasionally fixed the problem, but this was in rare cases.

I'm still looking for a real fix, dropping to ALSA only on the system fixed it for a very very short amount of time, until I lost all sound from ALSA. It was nice enough to keep it's thoughts on why it lacked sound to itself.

[FernandoHernandez]

Hi Fernando-

I've got one thing for you to try and I'm hoping that you are experiencing an issue that I recently ran into. I use gentoo, but it is a problem that could affect ubuntu as well. After my last big upgrade of software I was having spotty sound issues. Eventually I realized that my sound server was not properly mixing (if it was hardware or software mixing I'm unsure).

This is how the problem works: If a program uses the sound server, it does not let anything else use the sound server. So if I had amarok running in the background (even if it was not playing anything) it took over the sound server and would not let my browser, mplayer, vlc, etc. use it simultaneously. Luckily this is an easy problem to diagnose and fix, if in fact this is what is happening.

Diagnosis:
1.) Kill any programs that might be controlling the sound server.
2.) Open one program and try to play something.
3.) If it is playing, now try to open a new program and play something else.
4.) If the new program does not play anything, give it a try in reverse (Kill both programs, play something with program 2 then try program 1)

If only one of them can handle anything at once, but each works independently then I fixed it by typing the following into my terminal.

Fix:


#alsaconf

This will take you through a series of questions and afterward my sound was fixed.

I hope this is the, otherwise maybe we can work it out on a second go round.

Good luck!

This is exactly what my problem is. Closing Amarok causes some programs that weren't receiving audio to receive it now, though others are still unresponsive entirely (Pidgin for instance). Unfortunately, typing #alsaconf into my terminal told me 'command not found'; does anyone know if there is an Ubuntu equivalent to this command to bring up the same series of questions? I'm hoping that since the problem described here was what I've been experiencing, the same solution will fix it, I just need to know what command to type.

Thank you very much for helping me pinpoint the problem, sdimhoff

[Route]

There is no alsaconf in Ubuntu, it breaks more packages than it fixes. I'm not sure exactly what all, but from what I see it's very important things!

[Route]

ubuntuforums.[org]/showthread.php?t=789578]HOWTO: PulseAudio Fixes & System-Wide Equalizer Support - Ubuntu Forums seems to fix it

still don't have 15 posts, oughta help people more.

[sdimhoff]

Unfortunately, typing #alsaconf into my terminal told me 'command not found'; does anyone know if there is an Ubuntu equivalent to this command to bring up the same series of questions?

Hmmm, after doing some digging I found that Ubuntu removed it quite some time ago. I found this comment where people were discussing whether or not to bring it back to ubuntu:

When sound doesn't work unless the user runs alsaconf it means:

* The user's system isn't configured properly. Probably a module name needs to be added to /etc/modules or something.
* The alsaconf utility provided the user with some useful information, even though in an ideal world it wouldn't be needed.

Then I found a sound troubleshooting page with some relevant information, although it wasn't that helpful

Getting more than one application to use the soundcard at the same time

You might want to play a game and listen to music on your favorite music player at the same time. To do this successfully, you will have to use ALSA since it supports this feature the best. On all the music players I know of, you can configure the sound engine, to any module that is available.

The setting is usually found under something like Tools >>> Configure >>> Player Engines.
For games, it is a bit more tricky since there is not always a way to configure the player engine directly. Most games, however, do support the OSS. ALSA has an OSS module that allows OSS applications to use the ALSA driver.

To do this you will need the alsa-oss package sudo apt-get install alsa-oss
After doing this step, it is very easy to use alsa-oss. In the shell, you can type 'aoss' then the name of the program name you want to use with alsa-oss.

So I guess I don't have that much to give you and I'm sorry. Here is what I would do if I was in your situation.
1.) look in /etc/modules and /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf and such to make sure you are loading all of the modules and module options that you need. (Figuring out if you need to add some module options to your configuration may be part of the battle. Start looking for forum posts/troubleshooting pages specifically about your soundcard or chipset).
2.) Try looking in the sound settings for anything that says mixing.
3.) Go through some of the things on these two pages to see if anything starts to shake out: Comprehensive Sound Problem Solutions Guide - Ubuntu Forums and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/So... the same time

I'll continue to poke around to see if I can find anything for you.