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I just performed a fresh install of Kubuntu 13.10 on my machine. Everything is working great except for Skype.

I cannot get any form of audio playback in Skype. In the sound settings panel I get a bunch of different sound sources, none of which work! At the moment I have set it to "sysdefault (unknown)"

I installed it using the deb package found on the official website. My phonon backend is using phonon-gstreamer.

When running skype from the terminal I get the following error messages:

ALSA lib control.c:953:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL plughw:CARD=PCH
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1022:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1022:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1022:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1022:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1022:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1022:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave

Is this a known problem or has anyone experienced the problem and managed to solve it?

Michael Aquilina
  • 630

1 Answers1

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Ok well I seem to have found the problem. I am using a 64 bit version of Kubuntu and unfortunately skype only comes in a 32bit flavour.

If you want skype to work you need to install the corresponding pulse audio plugins in 32bit:

sudo apt-get install libasound2-plugins:i386

I found that you need to restart to get it to work after installing this package. You could probably just restart the pulse audio daemon but I didn't try that.

I find it really strange that Skype's deb package doesn't do this for you automatically. I feel they should put this as part of an automatic installation process.

EDIT: Also relevant: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Skype

If you install skype using the instructions provided on that page, you should have no problems with the audio so I highly recommend it as a way of installing skype.

Michael Aquilina
  • 630