Browser Upgraded -- sound issue weirdness

[Simon]

Recently did an upgrade of my Chromium browser and only 1 website has no sound. It is a flash game site and there are tons of them and more than often you mute the noise. But this is an issue (like a single sand flea in your bed) non the less. Here is what I have;

Since the upgrade to Version 43.0.2357.81 Ubuntu 14.04, using; Chrome (embedded), Chromium-based browsers – PPAPI 18.0.0.160 Flash, I have no sound on Kongregate.com. Other sites such as; Armor Games, Facebook, and YouTube still have audio.

I tested this by going to the same game on another website and there was sound. I played yet another game from the website of its origin and there was sound. This only occurred after the upgrade and unfortunately so far this is the only website effected by the upgrade.

1. It is NOT malware or a virus, I serious doubt that some hacker twisting his evil moustache is going after one website in particular. I always download from the trusted canonical.
2. Deleted my default settings under .config/chromium/ and just getting all my passwords, bookmarks, and settings back in is quiet a chore… it didn’t work so I am not doing it twice.
3. I tried the few Flash settings there are available to me. Such as running in hardware acceleration. I even went as far as trying to flip some flags in the browser’s hidden settings.
4. Sound is dead across all the browsers for this one site. I wouldn’t want to switch to another browser for just one site anyway.
5. I tried both disabled extensions and incognito.

I am suspecting that some place inside the settings is a file that has the sound “blacklisted” for whatever reason. When I find a solution I will update this thread. If anyone can suggest something I have overlooked then by all means, I am open to digging about some more in my settings. Audio is not a game breaker.

Update: June 20th

One person suggested that it may be my audio drivers....
Well ok, but it was the browser and maybe some plugins upgraded, not my drivers.
lspci reveals this and I posted it to the other forum as well.

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset DRAM Controller (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family SATA Controller [IDE mode] (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Cedar [Radeon HD 5000/6000/7350/8350 Series]
01:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Cedar HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5400/6300 Series]
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)

To which they said; "Try turning off your Cedar HDMI Audio, it may be causing a conflict."
LOL ok how? I asked.. "IDK I haven't worked with Linux for over 10 years."
Experts, got to love the experts.

Update

Ok now I fixed it... I have no sound across ALL my websites!

I added; sudo apt-get install phonon-backend-vlc as suggested by yet another expert. Removing it now...

--- done audio back but still wonky ---

Sooo... what is a "backend"? Apparently I have more research to do. I'm so glad all this bad advice is not coming from this forum.

[Simon]

Well I really do appreciate all your help here. How do I completely wipe out Pulseaudio in Kubuntu 14.04? "ONCE and for all" and have ALSA only without breaking my system? How do I burn this out of my HD without having to switch to another distribution?

I am sick and tired of Pulseaudio causing minor issues and giving me gray hair before my time. I spent ALL weekend working on this audio issue and it boils down to PULSEAUDIO will not work with my hardware.

Thanks,

Simon

[Snowhog]

Are you using Adobe Flash, or Pepperflash?

[Simon]

To answer your question;

It may read "Adobe" but we know better, since they don't make version 18.0.

Also the location line states = Location: /usr/lib/chromium/PepperFlash/libpepflashplayer.so
This was obtained with chrome://plugins

Adobe Flash Player - Version: 18.0.0.160
Shockwave Flash 18.0 r0
Name:	Shockwave Flash
Description:	Shockwave Flash 18.0 r0
Version:	18.0.0.160
Location:	/usr/lib/chromium/PepperFlash/libpepflashplayer.so
Type:	PPAPI (out-of-process)
 	Disable
MIME types:	
MIME type	Description	File extensions
application/x-shockwave-flash	Shockwave Flash	
.swf
application/futuresplash	FutureSplash Player	
.spl

The problem isn't the Flash anymore, it is a constant up hill battle of removing the Pulse Audio from this system. Every now and then (marking it on the wall) an upgrade returns this evil child to play tricks on me. I don't know who thought Pulse Audio was the "bees knees" but all I see are forum post after forum post of how to remove, purge, and otherwise destroy Pulse Audio and return to only ALSA.

So I purged my PA and that seems to have cured my problem. Apparently it had to sneak in with the browser upgrade... of course.

BTW I will mark this solved tomorrow, assuming no other sound issues arise from my changes.

[SteveRiley]

Actually, the problem isn't PulseAudio. PA tends to expose bugs in sound hardware and audio drivers. ALSA is more forgiving in this regard. However, most software components for Linux assume that PA is installed, so you might run into other problems in the future.

[Simon]

Hello Steve,

I just feel like new distros are making items that are no longer "optional" as they should be. When I asked it to purge the PA, it responded that over 200 items would be removed. This was using the command line; sudo apt-get purge pulse* Instead I had to settle for remove pulseaudio, then I rebooted and had to pick and choose through the items listed in the package manager. There is a library still in there that want to purge my system upon removal. That doesn't sound all sunshine and lollipops to me more like a viral contamination of my system. I know people mean well who write it up, but what about my option not to use it?

I have opened up a new partition in my HD and testing out Open SuSE there. I am dual booting for now, but it uses ALSA no PA. It would be sad that I would be required to leave a distro I know and love, but I don't care for the strong arm tactic of linking a program I don't like into the very core of the OS. PA may work fine on new or fancy audio cards but my machine is just fine. I don't plan to upgrade hardware to keep up with the OS either. I just upgraded from 12.04 to 14.04 a few months back and had the system all tweaked the way I liked it. I might consider rolling back to 12.04 since it wasn't so bad either.

Pulse Audio developers can use this as their slogan; "We put the Snap! Crackle! and Pop! into your PC"

[SteveRiley]

I know people mean well who write it up, but what about my option not to use it?

Compare that with a developer's option to write a program to take advantage of PulseAudio. Or, for that matter, DBus. PA is a modern fact of life in almost all Linux distributions.

Your updates to your original post reflects what I'd call guesses from others. The Cedar HDMI audio is provided by the AMD graphics adapter in your PC. Both NVIDIA and AMD offer HDMI audio; this is in addition to the built-in Intel HD audio present in nearly all Intel machines. This could be an issue, which I'll return to in a moment.

The advice to install phonon-backend-vlc is surely a guess. Phonon is KDE's audio abstraction layer. It needs to talk to a "backend," which in turn talks to PulseAudio, which in turn talks to ALSA. The default backend for Kubuntu is GStreamer (phonon-backend-gstreamer), which works fine.

Returning to the possible HDMI issue. When you right-click on the KMix icon in the system tray and choose Select Master Channel, which channel is highlighted as the default? Here's mine:

[Simon]

Hi Steve, not at home at the moment. I am waiting on lunch to arrive. Today we all ordered Chinese food. I have sliders there, I know that for sure. I also have mine set to analog. But with the PA running it sounds horrible. I muted the HDMI. I tried tricks like pasuspender and kill commands, but in the end I have to eliminated it. I just run the VGA off my old GPU. I have a small ATI Radeon 1GB in there (I am not a power gamer) it seems to help with the video aspect. The sound comes off the mobo which is Realtek. That name seems to pop up a lot with these PA issues online.

I chose to buy an ATI Radeon card because it was cheap ($30 I think) long time ago. I don't care much for software companies getting their claws into everything either. When I do get free time to play a 3D game, I see "Nvidia the only way you can play" pops up more often than not. ATI seems to spread less payola around to get their meat hooks in the software. I assume these people program based on their hardware. So the lesson is sent out to buy the name brand or take it on the chin. I have spent some time in other forums reading the same thing from high end gaming communities. You have some guy who bought a low budget ATI card and the power gamer tells him he needs break down and buy a new system.

I didn't get into Linux because it is cheap or free, although that is a factor, I got into Linux because of the option was available. It just seems to me that Pulse Audio removes any options. The programmers are saying, "This is it, you can't move ahead until you use our product." I don't see how having 3 to 4 systems just to operate sound is a positive. ALSA, Pulse Audio, or backend streamers just sounds like a bloated response to something that could be made more simple.

My food is here, I am going to eat now. I plan to do something similar to what we did here in the office. This time after I get my system repaired and tweaked, I am pulling out all those repositories in the system. No repository means no updates.

[SteveRiley]

Actually, audio is anything but simple. Hardware interfaces (except for Intel HD) are poorly defined. Getting drivers to work when documentation is poor is close to miraculous. But the drivers are buggy, and PA often reveals this. Sometimes, ACPI wankery interferes with proper operation. Hell, for years now the kernel has pretended to be Windows just so that the hardware won't intentionally disable some features.

To make your PC sing requires the construction of a long software chain called a filter graph. All this happens in the various abstraction layers that live between the drivers and whatever applications you use to produce sound. Arguably, audio is more complicated than graphics.

[Simon]

I guess we all take a lot for granted. Here all this time, I thought it was a metal stylus on a wax cylinder spun by a gerbil.

I suppose it doesn't help that most of the hardware companies are in MS pocket and has been for several decades. On a brighter note, I quickly learned something about Open SuSE. While it doesn't use the Pulse Audio, which I give it +1 for that fact, it lacks a lot of other bells and whistles I am custom to having. I tried the native Gnome/Cinnamon interface which was ok, but the feel I got was clutter and confusion. I also tried the KDE version as well. I decided to keep it on a DVD as an emergency disk. I now have my system running dual boot 12.04 / 14.04 Kubuntu. The 14.04 has the PA and nothing removed but I am using it for "workage" and less gaming. The 12.04 has the PA stripped and ALSA only. I just had a thought.. I should edit the grub menu to display Work and Play as the labels. lol

[SteveRiley]

I tried the native Gnome/Cinnamon interface which was ok, but the feel I got was clutter

Hahaha! You made a funny -- and probably didn't even realize it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutter_(software)

Clutter is a GObject-based graphics library for creating hardware-accelerated user interfaces.... Popular programs that adopt Clutter are GNOME Videos (a.k.a Totem), GNOME Shell, Pitivi, Cinnamon Desktop and GNOME Ease.

[Simon]

That is rather funny. I just felt like the controls were not laid out well. I keep my desktop pretty much "zen like", no icons just wallpaper and a clock. I place common icons on the panel at the bottom.

Edited: This article from TechRepublic sums up how I feel about the whole Pulse Audio issue;

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/lin...-needs-repair/

My favorite part of this article;

The PulseAudio developers have to deal with multiple hardware, many distributions, desktops, and applications. It would be a daunting task for anyone. But — and here's where the sympathy leaves the building for me — prior to PulseAudio, this wasn't an issue (and the developers of Esound, OSS, and Alsa had the same pressures on their shoulders).