Problem with headphones

[Naushika]

I don't get any sound from headphones on my laptop. Their volume is set to zero in alsamixer and can't be changed. I've tried with and without sudo, with no difference. The headphones work in Windows so there shouldn't be any broken hardware issues involved. I don't know anything about the sound card in this laptop. Lspci says
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)

[SteveRiley]

May we see a screenshot of

sudo alsamixer

[Naushika]

Thanks, I'll look into Pulse audio.
Here's how alsamixer looks w/ or w/o headphones. Actually the volume is not set to anything, it's as if it can't be set at all. My headphones have the regular 3.5 mm jack and no volume control or other fancy stuff in them.

[Naushika]

Ok, with Pulseaudio I can adjust headphones volume. When I plug in the headphones the output device port is switched to headphones and, if I set volume to maximum I can hear sound with a low volume and bad quality like there's too much gain. But, if I switch the port back to speakers, I get good quality sound with much less gain from the headphones, and speakers stay muted. I found bug #911331 that looks like the same problem. Not sure what I should try next. At least I can now use headphones even though I have to switch the port every time I plug them in. Thanks Teunis for pointing me in the right direction.

[FezMiester]

This error can be linked to any other problems? I bought a new laptop and 12.04 is not letting me use the headphone jack. however currently the computer won't boot do to dependency issues.
keep us updated Naushika of any progress. I will try pulseaudio after I get 12.04 working again.