Soundcard not detected by pulseaudio (but by alsa)

Question

After upgrading from 18.04 > 20.04 my internal soundcard of my laptop is not proberly recognized by pulseaudio. Altough alsamixer is shwoing the card. Any hints?

aplay -l
**** Liste der Hardware-Geräte (PLAYBACK) ****
Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 0: ALC293 Analog [ALC293 Analog]
  Sub-Geräte: 0/1
  Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0
Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Sub-Geräte: 1/1
  Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0
Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Sub-Geräte: 1/1
  Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0
Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
  Sub-Geräte: 1/1
  Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0
Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 9: HDMI 3 [HDMI 3]
  Sub-Geräte: 1/1
  Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0
Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 10: HDMI 4 [HDMI 4]
  Sub-Geräte: 1/1
  Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0
Karte 1: Dock [USB3.0 Dual Video Dock], Gerät 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Sub-Geräte: 1/1
  Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0

The HDA Intel PCH is the right device see:

lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Coffee Lake HOST and DRAM Controller (rev 0b)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 620 (Whiskey Lake)
00:12.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP Thermal Controller (rev 30)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP USB 3.1 xHCI Controller (rev 30)
00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP Shared SRAM (rev 30)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP MEI Controller #1 (rev 30)
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP SATA Controller [AHCI Mode] (rev 30)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev f0)
00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #9 (rev f0)
00:1d.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #10 (rev f0)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP LPC Controller (rev 30)
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP High Definition Audio Controller (rev 30)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP SMBus Controller (rev 30)
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP SPI Controller (rev 30)
39:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8411B PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)
39:00.1 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
3a:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless-AC 9260 (rev 29)

When i open pavucontrol the card is not showing up. Sees that there is something wrong. I already tried the following followed by a reboot:

sudo apt-get --purge remove linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils
sudo apt-get install linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils

Did not help unfortunately... Any hints?

Answer 1

If you get things working with

sudo alsa force-reload

But need to repeat it every time you reboot, it's worth trying:

sudo apt purge timidity-daemon

then reboot.

This worked for me after an upgrade from 18.04 to 20.04. Before making this change sound worked fine if I booted using the old linux kernel from 18.04 (which was left on my system after the upgrade). So for my system the problem was how timidity daemon worked with the 5.4 kernel.

Answer 2

Okay I found a workaround

sudo alsa force-reload

brought back my soundcard to life. So i decided to put a script with the follwing content into startup script:

#!/bin/bash
sudo alsa force-reload

and fired the script up into:

sudo chmod +x /etc/rc.local
sudo nano /etc/rc.local

and put the line in:

sh /path/to/alsa_force_reload.sh

F3 and save. That workes for me. For the time being ;)