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I'm not exactly describing one problem, because I feel like solving it would be useless.

In the last 3 months I had a HUGE amount of problems with my headphone jack / speakers. I am using Ubuntu 12.04 on an Alienware M17x machine. Ever since I installed Ubuntu 3 months ago, a new sound problem came up every day, here is a short list :

  • Without an headphone jack, speakers work fine, but when I put my headphone jack in, sound still plays through my speakers; I have to go through pavucontrol to get the sound to go through my headphone jack (that is actually a very recurrent problem)
  • Sound is very low in the headphone jack (barely audible if I go in pavucontrol and put the headphone volume at 150% and the room is quiet).
  • Sound goes through both speakers and headphone jack when pavucontrol sets the output to headphone jack
  • Microphone input is very low (barely audible as in the previous problem) but the microphone outputs the same thing as my headphone jack is outputting
  • etc, etc, etc.

All these problems have one thing in common which pisses me off a lot : I was using my computer (I barely ever turn it off), all the settings were fine at some point, didn't touch anything, and then BAM problem. Very frustrating. I believe a cause might be because updates were done silently while I was using my computer but I admit I never actually noticed that the problems arrived right after an update. Otherwise I have no idea where these magical problems came from.

So here's the question : Why could I possibly get all these sound problems out of nowhere? I am not even bothering to ask how to fix them, because more often than not these problems were fixed by... ''dumb fixes'', i.e. go to some parameter in pavucontrol/alsamixer, switch it on then off (or the opposite) (in other words, doing nothing very special) and then BAM problem fixed. I am sick of these mysteries, as you can see.

Edit

sudo lsb_release -a:

    No LSB modules are available.
    Distributor ID: Ubuntu
    Description:    Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS
    Release:    12.04
    Codename:   precise

sudo uname -a:

    Linux patrick-M17xR4 3.5.0-41-generic #64~precise1-Ubuntu SMP Thu Sep 12 16:50:04 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

sudo dpkg -l | grep alsa:

    ii  alsa-base                                    1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu1.1                           ALSA driver configuration files
    ii  alsa-utils                                   1.0.25-1ubuntu5.2                                Utilities for configuring and using ALSA
    ii  bluez-alsa                                   4.98-2ubuntu7                                    Bluetooth ALSA support
    ii  bluez-alsa:i386                              4.98-2ubuntu7                                    Bluetooth ALSA support
    rc  gnome-alsamixer                              0.9.7~cvs.20060916.ds.1-3                        ALSA sound mixer for GNOME
    ii  gstreamer0.10-alsa                           0.10.36-1ubuntu0.1                               GStreamer plugin for ALSA

The command sudo lspci | grep audio outputted nothing.

Patrick Da Silva
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3 Answers3

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I've found a way which will surely solve your problem of low sound in headphone.

  • First play any song so that you can feel the change in sound.

  • Run this command in terminal:

    alsamixer

    if alsamixer is not installed then install it by: sudo apt-get install gnome-alsamixer

  • In terminal itself one interface will be opened as shown here:

image
(source: akamaihd.net)

  • Now use your -> arrow key to reach to option mic select. It is shown in red colour for which it is displaying Mic1 as value. For you it would display Mic2

  • Change it to Mic1 by using Up or Down arrow keys.

  • Your headphone sound should be increased. If not then try to change (increase/decrease) other values by Up or Down arrow keys.

Hope it would work for you this time.. Reply if you need any further assistance..

Glorfindel
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Saurav Kumar
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You can try this guide to help you get back the audio on your PC.

user271869
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I tried everything to correct the "no sound" issue (Ubuntu 12.04.) I finally stumbled into an easy solution:

  1. Right click volume icon (upper right corner.)
  2. Click, "Play Sound Through"
  3. Test each option listed (e.g., the one that worked for me was "Analog Output/Amplify SD Audigy".)

Hope this helps.

Bill Owens
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