Installed Lubuntu 16.04 version no audio now

Question

I apologize if I am to vague in my question/statement. I just installed LUbuntu 16.04 onto my laptop, which is a HP Pavilion G6 series, AMD Processor, and it does have an HDMI port. I can't seem to get audio or any sound at all to come out of my laptop. I made sure I updated what I could find and even searched forums for different audio software but none have seemed to work. Some of thoses being Alsamixer/gui,pulse audio, and another one which I can't quite remember. Is there any way that I can get my audio to work? Sorry again for any confusion, I am a novice at best.

(UPDATE) I was able to get it to work,it was the HDMI port and I installed the pulse audio controller. Thank you all for the help!!!

Answer 1

Before anything, make sure your sound is not muted.

ALSA and PulseAudio don't get together well. They are conflicting each other most of the times. Unless ALSA is specifically required by an app or hardware I recommend using only Pulse (it's newer and better).
First, remove alsa completely by opening a Terminal window and typing:

sudo apt-get remove --purge alsa  

Secondly install Pulse:

sudo apt-get install pavucontrol

pavucontrol is the graphical interface for Pulse, but it will install Pulse completely (as its dependencies).

And finally, type:

gksu pavucontrol  

A Pulse window should come up with many tabs and options. Make sure the inputs and outputs matches your connection (hdmi, usb, headphones, etc), and make sure Pulse is using the correct audio card (on-board, dedicated, external usb/hdmi device, etc). E.g. When connecting laptop to large screens via hdmi, Pulse might detect the hdmi audio card as external output device with specific brand (not necessary the same as vendor brand). If so, you must choose that external card as output to make audio work.

Be aware that Ubuntu doesn't support hdmi hot-plugging! After disconnecting hdmi device, Pulse (or ALSA) will not fall-back to previous settings. You have to change the settings (again) and then restart the Pulse audio service by log out + log in in order to make things work again.

Answer 2

I had the same problem with a fresh install of Lubuntu 16.04.

First I installed pulseaudio and pavucontrol with 'sudo apt-get install pulseaudio pavucontrol`

This didn't seem to help at all although I got the nice pavucontrol app.

Then it dawned on me to check my groups with the command groups and discovered I wasn't a member of the audio group which means I'm not allowed to use audio. lubuntu doesn't appear to setup that group by default. You can resolve this simply with the command sudo usermod -a -G audio username where username is your username. The -a is required to add a supplementary group (or groups) to your existing list of groups and is only used with the -G option. audio is the groupname.

Further reading:

man groups

man usermod

Answer 3

'Pavucontrol' didnot help me.

Tried a lot of methods after a lot of search I tried using alsamixer.

Alsamixer helped me.

sudo apt-get alsamixer

Please open a terminal and enter 'alsamixer' and make sure the channels are not muted 'MM' or on zero level.

Answer 4

Only this one could work for me (paste all at once):

sudo apt-get update;sudo apt-get dist-upgrade; sudo apt-get install pavucontrol linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils lightdm ubuntu-desktop  linux-image-`uname -r` libasound2; sudo apt-get -y --reinstall install 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 `cat /etc/group | grep -e '^pulse:' -e '^audio:' -e '^pulse-access:' -e '^pulse-rt:' -e '^video:' | awk -F: '{print $1}' | tr '\n' ',' | sed 's:,$::g'` `whoami`

And then a reboot by:

sudo reboot

Details can be found here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshootingProcedure

Answer 5

I tried everything that was ever recommended online, I was only able to fix my PC sound issue by running the following commands:

killall pulseaudio
rm -r ~/.config/pulse/*
rm -r ~/.pulse*

Some directories may not exist, that is OK.

then:

pulseaudio -k

then reboot

I found this solution here, there are also some other recommended solutions if this doesn't work.

Answer 6

alsa-utils still needed for keyboard shortcuts. After removing alsa and installing pulseaudio, the sound was working. The keyboard shortcuts for volume-control were then no longer working. I had to install alsa-utils and then they were working.

Answer 7

I had the exact same problem in Lubuntu.

Open volume control and you'll see Playback, Recording, Output Devices, Input Devices and Configuration. Go to Configuration tab and change the built in audio profile to:Digital Stereo (HDMI) Output+Analog Stereo Input. If you can't find that option in there then maybe you need to have Jack retasking of HDA Intel sound cards installed.

I found it by searching for "alsa" in synaptic package manager and then I didn't know what I needed so I thought I'd install everything labeled "alsa". After installing all the alsa tools from synaptic you're gonna end up with a bunch of new tools under sound & video in your start menu. I had to use hdajackretask for intel sound cards but you might find the same for other cards. You definitely need alsa-tools-gui to have the hdajackretask tool in sound and video.

Answer 8

ASUS EEE PC X101CH on lubuntu 16.10

Hi, I had the exact problem twice and after trying everything written everywhere that is what saves me:

Install "gnome alsa mixer" (I am using pulse audio) Start it Turn up/on the "headphones" line voilà!!

Somehow the OS confuses the speakers with the headphones, and pavucontrol does not help me.

Answer 9

This one worked for me...

1. Restart the computer
2. Enter BIOS
3. Go to options for front panel jacks
4. Select AC97 instead of HD
5. Save, boot normally

Use front panel jacks

Answer 10

I did all the above to no avail.

What did work was simply unplugging my desktop speakers from headphone jack and plugging them into the Line Out jack.