No sound from headphones Ubuntu 16.04

Question

So I had this problem from the day I installed ubuntu on the separate partition. I get sound from my laptop, but nothing from the headphones, I would usually restart my laptop 2-3 times and it would go back to normal for a week or so, but this time after 10 restarts, it is not solving the issue. I am aware that this is a Ubuntu 16.04 bug, but did someone find a solution for this? This is what I done/investigated so far:

pavucontrol shows that my headphones are detecting sound if I play a video from youtube, but I get no sound.

Overall sound settings show that they detect my headphones.

I also ran update and dist-upgrade, nothing.

Answer 1

Try that :
In Pavucontrol, "output device" tab:
when headphones are connected , you logically see "headphones" in output port:
but try to switch port to "speakers" .

This worked recently for me on a HP 820 g1.
Real fix is to use hdajackretask to modify bad audio feed to headphone, but it depends on your hardware .

Answer 2

I have the same issue. I simply restart (kill) the sound daemon that I am using on my laptop (Lenovo ideapad 100 on Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS).

In the terminal, I run this:

pulseaudio -k

Answer 3

I don't know the reason why, but on my laptop I can use the regular headphone jack on a fresh boot.

But after a suspend I need to move my headphones to the Line Out jack. If I use the headphone jack I don't get any sound. When I try to play a sound I can see the Output Device volume meter moving but don't hear anything.

If I unplug the speakers kick on, as expected. Plug back in and nothing. But if I move the headphones to the other jack it works.

I don't know what the icon is supposed to mean, but it looks like a squared off sine wave with an arrow aiming out which is why I called it Line Out.

That might help somebody.

EDIT: I figured out that it's the S/PDIF Out Jack that works for me.

Answer 4

I have the same problem on my 2 laptops with latest Ubuntu 16.04.

The next steps helped me:

1. Power Off your laptop.

2. Unplug Headphones from the jack.

3. Power On your laptop.

4. Only after the Login procedure, plug in your headphones.

I hope this helps you.

Answer 5

My advice is to update the linux kernel inside ubuntu 16.04. I once clicked on install updates which did modifications to the operating system and also updated the kernel to a newer version, that was also the reason why my headphones didn't work, speaker audio was fine tough. After I followed this guide:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack#Ubuntu_16.04_LTS_-_Xenial_Xerus

about how to update the linux kernel to the very newest available version and rebooted once the headphones work fine again.

I used this command: apt-get install --install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-16.04 xserver-xorg-hwe-16.04