After installing Ubuntu 13.04 x64, I realised that my sound wasn't working (only headphone showed up in settings).
Following this guide, I manually added my Dell Studio 1740 audio hardware to:
options snd-hda-intel model=dell-m6
Within etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf.
Using the test speakers feature, I found that no sound was coming out of my right speaker (the one with the power and volume dials).
...try going to alsamixer (type alsamixer in terminal).
I found many bars having their right channel lower than their left. (In this image you see only one bar). So I just lowered all their volumes to zero and back up again so they became even.
(Navigation in alsamixer is easy. Just use your arrow keys. Right and left to select the bar, up and down to lower/raise the volume).
Make sure your sound card is the one selected. Pressing F6 will show you a list for the available sound cards. Select yours! ...If you're not sure try them all. It's not dangerous ;)
...It's a bit odd that balance wasn't showing this difference in channels in the sound settings nor in pulse audio volume control. alsamixer did the trick however. Hope this helps.
First open Sound settings:
Then in Output tab adjust the balance for left and right speakers:
Also you can click on Test Sound button to test the volume for each speaker.
Open Pulseaudio volume control, then under the Playback tab (first tab from the left) check each channel volume level and check if the channels' volume levels are locked between them (they have to be locked in order to keep the same volume level for the two channels -left and right-). As a side check, check the plug too. Sometimes a bad contact kills the sound of one of the channels.
pavucontrol did the trick for me.
sudo apt-get install pavucontrol
I am using Ubuntu 14.04 on this hardware (Intel motherboard) https://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/7624/i-love-my-raspberry-pi3b-as-a-workstation-but-what-is-the-next-step-better/7625#7625
(A $38/free shipping to US) for-real computer.
I thought it was hardware until running pavucontrol.
It showed that one channel was turned all the way down. As soon as I started moving one they moved together, and it now works great.
I too faced this problem not just with one Linux OS but all of them.
I was using creative sound blaster 0106. I tried all that I could but failed.
I recollected earlier I had Yamaha sound card and when I changed from windows XP to 7 but it did not work and so I procured Creative which worked fine with Windows 7 Ultimate after downloading and installing drivers for Windows 7, so I thought why not go back to Yamaha sound card and give a try in Linux.
It works fine without any additional effort.
So the problem is with Sound card and not Linux.
In addition I would like to add I was very impressed by Windows 7 but using genuine free edition of Linux Mint Sarah is a big pleasure and it upgraded to to Serena like a song I have tried many Linux distributions like Ubuntu PC Linux Peppermint and liked all of them and now settled with Linux Mint Serena. Hats off to Linux creators
