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**Ole Juul** · Jul 20, 2010, 12:56 AM

Re: headphone jack does not work

Perhaps the problem is electrical. It is common for headphone jacks to incorporate a switch which disconnects the speaker when a phone is plugged in. The electrical source is thus the same which generally works very well. If you can normally plug in a phone and still hear the speaker, then this is not the case here. If the speaker goes off when you use the phones then I suspect a dirty or broken switch. You can fiddle with it by pushing the phone plug in and out and wiggling it.

**Krampusz** · Jul 20, 2010, 01:08 AM

Re: headphone jack does not work

Originally posted by Ole Juul

Perhaps the problem is electrical. It is common for headphone jacks to incorporate a switch which disconnects the speaker when a phone is plugged in. The electrical source is thus the same which generally works very well. If you can normally plug in a phone and still hear the speaker, then this is not the case here. If the speaker goes off when you use the phones then I suspect a dirty or broken switch. You can fiddle with it by pushing the phone plug in and out and wiggling it.

Do you mean plugging in a phone into a modem outlet? I don't have one (modem outlet) there is a wired internet port, a couple of USB ports, and a display port. The headphone outlet is a regular jack and if I plug it in the speaker goes off, but I believe that's what's supposed to happen, right? That's the point of a headphone. May be I am misunderstanding your suggestion, sorry. In that case, could you explain it again?

Thanks!!
-K

**Ole Juul** · Jul 20, 2010, 01:26 AM

Re: headphone jack does not work

Sorry.

Phone = headphone, same thing to old audio folks. Yes the headphone jack, though I'd guess you have what is properly (and normally) called a mini phone jack (1/8") which is what I see on consumer stuff these days. "Regular" phone plug size is 1/4" (to be pedantic).

Anyway: So you plug in the headphone and the speaker goes off. That is a switching jack and what I expected. That means that if you can hear the speaker then the electronics are sending a signal through the jack. If there is no sound when you plug in the headphone, then it is an electrical problem. If I am right, it just needs a bit of cleaning, or it's broken, or your headphone has an open.

**Krampusz** · Jul 20, 2010, 01:50 AM

Re: headphone jack does not work

Originally posted by Ole Juul

Sorry.

Phone = headphone, same thing to old audio folks. Yes the headphone jack, though I'd guess you have what is properly (and normally) called a mini phone jack (1/8") which is what I see on consumer stuff these days. "Regular" phone plug size is 1/4" (to be pedantic).

OK, sorry. I thought you might mean something like this. And yes, I do mean a "mini phone jack". It's a laptop.

....
Anyway: So you plug in the headphone and the speaker goes off. That is a switching jack and what I expected. That means that if you can hear the speaker then the electronics are sending a signal through the jack. If there is no sound when you plug in the headphone, then it is an electrical problem. If I am right, it just needs a bit of cleaning, or it's broken, or your headphone has an open.

I doubt that this could be a problem since when I boot into Windows there is no problem. Plugging in the headphone makes the (built-in) speakers go off and the sound comes through the headphone. I even tried several different headphones. Also, the machine is brand new (circa 1 month old) and hasn't been in any dirty environment.

Is there a driver for the headphone jack that I might be missing?

Thanks,
-K

**Ole Juul** · Jul 20, 2010, 02:36 AM

Re: headphone jack does not work

Hmm. I did note that you said it worked in Windows, but I felt that there could still be an intermittent contact problem. What I have mentioned is a common electrical circuit for this kind of thing. However, I've been wrong before. (no kidding!) It is possible they have separate electrical channels (ie four op-amps) for separate headphone and speaker outputs. Chips are cheap nowadays.

Still, I'm pretty sure that there is not going to be any separate driver for the headphone. What driver are you using? Did you check the notes on drivers on the Alsa site? Sometimes there are shortcomings with specific chips. Anyway, it sounds like you've made the rounds already.

**The Liquidator** · Jul 20, 2010, 04:14 AM

Re: headphone jack does not work

You are certainly not the only one having this problem (unless the poster at the link is you of course)

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9428065

Problems with this card are also mentioned here, although that was in respect of no sound at all

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r237...oSound-problem

You could try what is shown there. However, when I bought my Dell 630m laptop 4 years ago I had a similar problem in that plugging a set of headphones in would not mute the speakers. If your sound card is new it may simply be that the developers simply haven't got round to making it work properly yet.

One other point: Dell has a ubuntu 10.04 image available. I might make sense to post on the dell support forums to ask whether the dell image has full support for the hardware (I would hope it does!)

**dibl** · Jul 20, 2010, 04:27 AM

Re: headphone jack does not work

I have good luck with such things, in recent versions, by installing pulseaudio, padevchooser, pavucontrol, and paman. Use padevchooser to pick your output device, and pavucontrol to unmute it and set the volume. You can leave kmix -- it will still work too.

**1richard** · Jul 20, 2010, 07:52 AM

Re: headphone jack does not work

Is it possible that is muted, check KMIX there is a headset control there

**Krampusz** · Jul 20, 2010, 09:05 AM

Re: headphone jack does not work

Originally posted by The Liquidator

You are certainly not the only one having this problem (unless the poster at the link is you of course)

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9428065

No, that's not me....

...
Problems with this card are also mentioned here, although that was in respect of no sound at all

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r237...oSound-problem

You could try what is shown there. However, when I bought my Dell 630m laptop 4 years ago I had a similar problem in that plugging a set of headphones in would not mute the speakers. If your sound card is new it may simply be that the developers simply haven't got round to making it work properly yet.

I tried that.

...
One other point: Dell has a ubuntu 10.04 image available. I might make sense to post on the dell support forums to ask whether the dell image has full support for the hardware (I would hope it does!)

That's a good idea, I will do this.

Thanks!!
-K

**vinnywright** · Jul 20, 2010, 10:39 AM

Re: headphone jack does not work

I dont know if this will be eney help to you....................BUT I have a querk on my desktop with sound and the frunt/headphone output.

IF I start the box and boot strate to Kubuntu I have no sound thrugh the frunt/headphone jack.

but if I boot windows first (even just to the login screen) and reboot the box and go to Kubuntu all my outputs work and show in Kmix................as long as the box is just rebooted sound is fine in Kubuntu.....shut it off and go strat to Kubuntu and Kmix shows a minamall set of chanels and the frunt/headphone wont work.

just an idea to check

VINNY

**GreyGeek** · Jul 20, 2010, 02:07 PM

Re: headphone jack does not work

Run

sudo alsamixer

in a Konsole and hit F5 to show all controls. (Some cards can't show all their controls on one screen so you may have to scroll right with the right arrow).

You can raise or lower volumes with the up & down arrows. Change controls with the left & right arrows, and mute or unmute with the "M" key. On controls that do not have volume sliders the up or down arrows change "ports".

On my old Gateway m675prr laptop I had to turn the speakers off so the sound could go to the headphones only by changing the output from "back jack" to "front jack".

**Krampusz** · Jul 21, 2010, 01:38 AM

Re: headphone jack does not work

First:
Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions!

Second:
I believe I now tried all of them and it still does not work....

If someone has any other ideas, I'd really appreciate it!!

Would it make sense to try to disable ALSA or Pulse? If so, how can I do that so that I can easily reverse everything?

Thanks again!!!
-Krampusz

**The Liquidator** · Jul 21, 2010, 02:53 AM

Re: headphone jack does not work

As indicated in one of the posts you could check add this line to add the line options snd-hda-intel model=dell-eq to alsa-base.conf in /etc/modprobe.d/.

As for removing alsa and pulse, I cannot be sure that doing either will work for you as you may well find that something else won't work then - most likely your USB speakers will stop working if you remove pulse.

I suspect that this is something that will be made to work, but in time. Did you get anywhere with Dell, although I suspect they've never sold that model with a linux option?

**Ole Juul** · Jul 21, 2010, 02:57 AM

Re: headphone jack does not work

Here are a few random-at-you-own-risk ideas:

Some people used to suggest that removing Pulse was a good idea. Perhaps it is now.
If you want a clean install of ALSA here is a script for that:
http://www.stchman.com/tools/alsa/alsa_setup.sh
This will download and compile modules and reboot etc.
Run it like this: sudo ./alsa_setup.sh

But wait!

Have you read this? http://alsa.opensrc.org/AlsaTips
Also this file is interesting: /home/you/.asoundrc.asoundconf
So is this one because it lists all the hardware like headphones:
/proc/asound/card0/yourcard (if this is card0)
That file really does look like it could tell a lot.

Good luck!

Edit: I guess you've checked here to check the capabilities of your driver:
http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Main
I don't know about Pulse drivers though (if there is such a thing)

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