Help! No Sound!

[pongolo]

I'm at the end of my rope with sound issues...

Since I started on Kubuntu about 5 years ago, I've had nothing but problems with sound working properly. I always managed to get it working but any updates would break it again. I recently upgraded the motherboard (MSI FM2-A75MA-E35) hoping to have a better experience with sound but it's still not working right and worse that with the old motherboard. I used this computer as an HTPC and is connected via HDMI to an Onkyo TX-SR606 receiver. Prior to changing the motherboard, once in a while it would recognize the Onkyo as the output. My major problem is no sound out via HDMI.

After spending a day trying out some things I found on the net, I finally got it working by uninstalling Pulse Audio. However, now it has stopped working and I'm back to square one.

I would appreciate any help! I'm no expert in Linux but can follow instructions

Thanks

[whatthefunk]

Try installing the Veromix plasma widget. Once its installed, put the widget on your desktop. It should allow you to easily send audio streams to your different outputs.

[pongolo]

Try installing the Veromix plasma widget. Once its installed, put the widget on your desktop. It should allow you to easily send audio streams to your different outputs.

I had played with Veromix previously without success. I reinstalled pulseaudio and it's still not working with Veromix.

Any other suggestions?

[Snowhog]

From SoundTroubleshootingProcedure

Step 16



If the HDMI output of your motherboard/sound card is not working or stopped working, and have already enabled and unmuted it in alsamixer, try the following HDMI troubleshooting procedure:


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...d.2rzn5uz8d2h4
Query for Playback Devices:

aplay -l

• [*=left]*** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC1200 Analog [ALC1200 Analog]
  • [*=left]Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  
  card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: ALC1200 Digital [ALC1200 Digital]
  • [*=left]Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  
  card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
  • [*=left]Subdevices: 0/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Now that we have the info for the HDMI device, try a test, In the example below, 0 is the card number and 3 is the device number.

aplay -D plughw:0,3 /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

If aplay does not output any errors, but still no sound is heared, "reboot" the receiver, monitor or tv set. Since the HDMI interface executes a handshake on connection, it might have noticed before that there was no audio stream embedded, and disabled audio decoding.

If the test is successful, edit/create /etc/asound.conf to set HDMI as the default audio device, reboot, and audio should now work. (Is there a better way to do this?)

cat /etc/asound.conf

• [*=left]pcm.!default {
  • [*=left]type plug slave.pcm {
    • [*=left]type hw card 0 device 3
    
    }
  
  }

[pongolo]

From SoundTroubleshootingProcedure

Thanks for the reply.

I have tried that in the past. I did not get any sound out when playing the test file. I turned off/on the receiver and that didn't work either.

Here's my aplay -l output:
aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: ALC887-VD Analog [ALC887-VD Analog]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Under Audio Settings I only get the following devices:
Built In Audio Digital Stereo (HDMI)
Built In Audio Digital Stereo

In the past I've removed Pulse Audio and that seemed to help but this time it worked for a short time and then it stopped.

[jlittle]

...sound issues...
,,, I recently upgraded the motherboard (MSI FM2-A75MA-E35) ...

Did you change the motherboard without reinstalling Kubuntu? I did that once, Intrepid I think, never got the sound working again, despite the kind efforts of the people here. (I guessed something about the sound is baked in during an install.) Does the sound work if you boot from a Kubuntu CD or DVD? If so, it'll likely work after a reinstall.

Regards, John Little

[pongolo]

Did you change the motherboard without reinstalling Kubuntu? I did that once, Intrepid I think, never got the sound working again, despite the kind efforts of the people here. (I guessed something about the sound is baked in during an install.) Does the sound work if you boot from a Kubuntu CD or DVD? If so, it'll likely work after a reinstall.

Regards, John Little

John, thanks for the reply.

I reinstalled Kubuntu several times after installing the new motherboard and tweaking things to make sure I didn't screw up something in the process.

When I uninstall Pulse Audio, I get more choices detected under Audio Settings. If I test the devices that show up without Pulse Audio I get the following error:

Device hw:0,3 does not work, falling back to hw:1,0 which still doesn't work.

Any other ideas?

Thanks

[whatthefunk]

Have you tried adding additional audio channels to your pulse audio files?

In the file /etc/pulse/default.pa, add the bolded line:

### Load audio drivers statically
### (it's probably better to not load these drivers manually, but instead
### use module-udev-detect -- see below -- for doing this automatically)
#load-module module-alsa-sink
#load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:1,0
#load-module module-oss device="/dev/dsp" sink_name=output source_name=input
#load-module module-oss-mmap device="/dev/dsp" sink_name=output source_name=input
#load-module module-null-sink
#load-module module-pipe-sink
[B]load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:1,7[/B]

The numbers 1 and 7 refer to you card number and the device number. This guide shows you how to find which number combination works on your system.

You mentioned that pulse audio didnt work on your system...this could resolve that issue.

[pongolo]

Thanks to all who helped!

I added the line whatthefunk has above to the /etc/pulse/default.pa and now the sound is working.

Appreciate all the help! Hopefully this will work for a LONG time!

Thanks again!