Sound stop working suddenly...? Only work again with a new user

Question

My sound stop working all of a sudden on my computer! When it started, I had to reboot and everything was getting back to normal but then it stopped coming back.

I try al sort of things! (Alsamixer, killall, restarting services!

The strange thing is that the sound work on the login screen. I created a new user avec the sound work on that session.

Any hint on what happenend?

I have an Asus F8P with Ubuntu 13.10

Thank you :-)

Daniel

Answer 1

On my old install of Ubuntu, the GUI mixer sometimes show that the volume is maxed, but I don't get sound. Back then, this is how I got around my issue.

In terminal, type:

alsamixer

Look underneath each bar, if you see MM, then use the left and right arrow keys to navigate to it and press M to unmute. The up and down arrow keys to change volume for each output or input.

Your problem might be more complex, in which case you can try the suggestion by wilf regarding moving around the configuration files.

If that doesn't do it, you can always try this.

sudo apt-get --purge alsa-base
sudo apt-get install alsa-base

Good luck!

Answer 2

Try using pavucontrol - PulseAudio Volume Control

sudo apt-get install pavucontrol

This had more advanced configuration options, so may work.

Another thing to try is moving the configuration. If the problem seems to occur only on your user, and works elsewhere, try this to move the relevant config files (some maybe be relevant, some may be not, but this will just back them up anyway):

mv ~/.config/pulse ~/.config/pulse.bak
mv ~/.gstreamer-0.10 ~/.gstreamer-0.10.bak
mv ~/.local/share/gstreamer-1.0 ~/.local/share/gstreamer-1.0.bak

If you want to restore them

mv ~/.config/pulse.bak ~/.config/pulse
mv ~/.gstreamer-0.10.bak ~/.gstreamer-0.10
mv ~/.local/share/gstreamer-1.0.bak ~/.local/share/gstreamer-1.0