[SOLVED] Lost all audio options after upgrading

[bradleypariah]

I just upgraded from 20.04 to 20.10 on my gaming machine yesterday. The machine boots fine, but the speaker icon in the notification area is gone, and there is no sound/audio button in System Settings anymore.

If I tap tap the Vol+ and Vol- buttons on my keyboard, the overlay icon doesn't show up.

I do have sound.

If I open a video or an audio file, I can hear the audio just fine, but I cannot adjust the volume, unless the app has its own volume settings.

If I open alsamixer from the terminal, I see my Intel HDA motherboard outputs (which are the ones I'm using), and I can also see my Nvidia GPU's outputs.
If I open pavucontrol, my Intel HDA motherboard outputs are there, and I can assign them in the correct configuration.
I have run pulseaudio --kill && pulseaudio --start, but it made no difference.
I have run sudo alsa force-reload, but it made no difference.
I have run sudo apt remove --purge alsa-base pulseaudio then
sudo apt install alsa-base pulseaudio, but it made no difference.

I simply have no sound/audio buttons anywhere in Plasma, nor any way to control it.

[GreyGeek]

What is your audio device name and model number?

[bradleypariah]

What is your audio device name and model number?

I'm using onboard 3.5mm 5.1 outputs
alsamixer calls it:
│ Card: HDA Intel PCH
│ Chip: IDT 92HD89E2

lspci says:
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)

[bradleypariah]

As one might expect, a reinstall of the whole OS fixes this issue. I didn't care to keep trying to figure out why the icon disappeared, so I backed up my Home folder and installed fresh. I'm going to mark this thread as [SOLVED] so no one thinks I'm still waiting for a reply.

[bradleypariah]

Well guess what? Unrelated to the issues I was having, my motherboard died, and I had to buy some new parts.

The sound issues came back with a completely different motherboard. I was using an HP/Cleveland/Intel setup, and I switched to MSI/AMD. No volume notifications on a fresh install.
I thought I'd come back and share how I solved it, just in case someone reads this someday.

I opened Muon, and installed the "kubuntu-dekstop" package, then rebooted.
I have no idea what setting or package that installed, but it worked, and it seemed like a safe enough package to install on a Kubuntu system.

[woodsmoke]

Hi bradleypariah
You pose an interesting situation and since we both run an Intel MOBO I thought that I would post this.

I have had no problem with sound in the last two iterations of Neon and also Kubu.

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)

And yeah, I'm an old hardware guy so been there myself!

I'm glad that things were able to be worked out.

woodsmoke