Sound card not detecting

Question

I recently tried to install Realtek audio driver. Procedure was completed successfully but when I rebooted system after installing my sound cards are not detecting and system is muted. Later I tried to take the system back to original state. Those steps are also completed.

• ALSA system info

Answer 1

Install common Sound card drivers and needed packages in Ubuntu.

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r` alsa-base alsa-firmware-loaders alsa-oss alsa-source alsa-tools alsa-tools-gui alsa-utils alsamixergui

Answer 2

I had the similar issue in Ubuntu 16.04 / Dell Inspiron 5559. Even my Bios was not detecting any Audio drivers.

I did tried to solve it by answers above but it did not worked. I tried to reinstall OS, but that did not worked too.

Finally I shut down my laptop and removed the Battery and restarted again. It worked.

But whenever I SUSPEND my Ubuntu, same issue occurs (neither Shutdown/Restart works). So everytime this problem occurs, I have to shut down & remove battery and audio works fine. Its a weird solution, i also don't know the reason behind it happening.

Answer 3

I tried using this page on the Ubuntu wiki to upgrade alsa and it worked for me.

Following these instructions will give you the latest ALSA driver, but only for internal "HDA Intel" sound cards (if your computer is from 2005 or newer, you almost certainly have a "HDA Intel" sound card for handling internal speakers, headphone jacks and microphones). USB or Bluetooth sound will not be affected.

Make sure the dkms package is installed by running command:

sudo apt-get install dkms

Go to this page

You will find a table under the "Packages" heading. Look for the "Series" column and locate the package corresponding to your distribution series (Precise, Trusty, Xenial etc).

In the case of Trusty, you will find more than one package. Then check what kernel you're running with the "uname -r" command. If the output of uname -r starts with...

• 3.13 - use the oem-audio-hda-daily-dkms
• 3.16 - use the oem-audio-hda-daily-lts-utopic-dkms package
• 3.19 - use the oem-audio-hda-daily-lts-vivid-dkms package
• 4.2 - use the oem-audio-hda-daily-lts-wily-dkms package

Click the arrow (to the left) to expand the row of the selected package. Under the new section "Package files", click the file ending with .deb, download and install it:

You can either do this by selecting open with, which will take you to the Ubuntu Software Center, where you can click Install, or

Save the file to disk, open a terminal window, change to the right directory and execute sudo dpkg -i <file name>

Reboot.

Answer 4

Check that the user is a member of the audio group.

Other groups that I added at the same time: video, pulse, pulse-access, rtkit. Not sure which of these are necessary. Note that you need to reboot, not just log in again, after doing this.

Answer 5

I'm on Xubuntu and the following worked for me.

I took Damandeep's answer as a starting point, but found I didn't need to go as far as updating the distribution or updating as many packages:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get --reinstall install pavucontrol linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils libasound2
sudo usermod -aG $(grep -e '^pulse:' -e '^audio:' -e \
'^pulse-access:' -e '^pulse-rt:' -e '^video:' /etc/group \
| awk -F: '{print $1}' \
| tr '\n' ',' \
| sed 's:,$::g') $(whoami)

Then reboot

It's worth noting that my sound card went missing after installing the Visual Studio Code extension "Live Share"

Answer 6

This also happened to me, and I followed these instructions, and now it works

1) Remove the ALSA packages.

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

2) Reinstall the same packages.

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

3) Install further audio addon packages (dkms included, but no worries since apt resolves package dependency for you)

sudo apt-get install dkms build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r` alsa-base alsa-firmware-loaders alsa-oss alsa-source alsa-tools alsa-tools-gui alsa-utils alsamixergui

4) Be sure to add the user to group audio

sudo usermod -a -G audio [user_name]

5) reboot

sudo reboot

Answer 7

This fixed it for me

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get --reinstall install pavucontrol linux-sound-base alsa-base \ 
alsa-utils lightdm ubuntu-desktop linux-image-`uname -r` libasound2
killall pulseaudio
rm -r ~/.pulse*
ubuntu-support-status
sudo usermod -aG $(grep -e '^pulse:' -e '^audio:' -e \
'^pulse-access:' -e '^pulse-rt:' -e '^video:' /etc/group \
 | awk -F: '{print $1}' \
 | tr '\n' ',' \
 | sed 's:,$::g') $(whoami)