I'm running 13.10 (all up-to-date) on a Lenovo laptop with a Griffin iMic USB audio device. Though I occasionally have to use the Pulse Audio volume control tool to re-select the iMic, it works consistently from everything on the system except Chrome, which basically has no audio at all.
With most applications that want to use the audio stuff, you see something in the first tab of pavucontrol
. Not Chrome; there's just nothing.
Some ancient forum posts here and there suggested symlinking the Firefox "plugins" directory over to Chrome's installation directory, which seems pretty goofy and which doesn't work now anyway.
Chrome version is 34.0.1847.132.
Is there some trick to making Chrome work with a USB audio device? (As far as I can tell it doesn't work with built-in audio either ...)
edit — Still not working, now on 14.04 and Chrome 37.0.2062.120
More info:
Chrome's been reinstalled more than once, with no effect. I've also tried the beta (currently Chrome 38.0.2125.77 beta). The PulseAudio manager tool, in its list of clients, shows Firefox and various other things, and also "Chrome input" but no "Chrome output".
Chromium behaves exactly the same way.
edit — now on an (old and tired) 15.04 installation. Chrome (Version 49.0.2623.112 (64-bit)
) still does not work, though on full moon nights or something else random it'll send sound through the built-in analog audio on the laptop. However, Chromium (Version 48.0.2564.82 Ubuntu 15.04 (64-bit)
) does work now, and it works through the USB audio device. I don't know of any particular thing I've done lately to make that true, but