37

I sometimes have the problem that I can't hear any sound on my Dell XPS13 with Ubuntu 16.04. I have a Logitech G930 connected to it. When I open pavucontrol it is stuck at "Establishing connection to PulseAudio. Please wait..." I have been following the Ubuntu Audio Problems Guide (german version is here: https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Sound_Problembehebung/#Soundsystem ) and found the following:

$ cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [PCH            ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH
                     HDA Intel PCH at 0xdc428000 irq 295
1 [H              ]: USB-Audio - Logitech G933 Gaming Wireless H
                     Logitech Logitech G933 Gaming Wireless H at usb->0000:00:14.0-1, full speed

So the sound cards are recognized. However, audio is not played:

$ aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav 
ALSA lib pulse.c:243:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Access denied
aplay: main:722: audio open error: Connection refused

Same with sudo:

$ sudo aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav
Home directory not accessible: Permission denied
Home directory not accessible: Permission denied
Playing WAVE '/usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav' : Signed 16 bit >Little Endian, Rate 48000 Hz, Mono

The "groups" command does NOT show the audio group, but what I think is strange that it works most of the time (and often so after restarting, if there are problems) so I'd guess it's not the problem.

Where else could I look?

Edit:

$ lspci -nnk | grep -A2 Audio
00:1f.3 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:9d71]     (rev 
21)
Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:075b]
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel



$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC3246 Analog [ALC3246 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: H [Logitech G933 Gaming Wireless H], device 0: USB Audio     [USB >Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0


$ pactl list short sinks
Connection failure: Access denied
Bernie
  • 471

8 Answers8

29

This solve the same problem with my:

pulseaudio --check
pulseaudio -D

Taken from: [Solved] Establishing connection to PulseAudio. Please wait ... https://classicforum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=27044.0

Indacochea Wachín
  • 743
18

I've had this issue since upgrading to 18.04 and read almost all there is about to read about it. I fiddled with the settings, the packages, and eventually it would work sometimes, after installing PulseEffects for getting the right channel throughput for the audio. But then when I would change the audio-output channel to say headphones instead of speakers, the gnome shell crashed. This crash gave me insight to some "obsolete packages" that were still installed and needed removing or upgrading.

So in summary, running these commands solved all my audio problems after a few weeks of debugging (so stupid if you see it now, but whatever works right?)

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get remove --purge alsa-base pulseaudio
sudo apt-get install alsa-base pulseaudio pavucontrol
sudo alsa force-reload
reboot

Then

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mikhailnov/pulseeffects
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pulseeffects

After a final resetting of the audio output channel, it worked like a charm again.

efthialex
  • 3,941
Asitis
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10

I solved this issue by deleting ~/.config/pulse followed by a reboot.

Eliah Kagan
  • 119,640
Whome
  • 200
2

systemctl --user restart pulseaudio.service

I found this one on internet and this also work for me. ha ha ha.

Anisur Rahman
  • 21
2
pulseaudio -k
pulseaudio -v
sudo reboot

it worked in my case

Mandeep Yadav
  • 21
1

I have tried every possible solution from everywhere to get the sound working through HDMI on NUC11PAHi7 on Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS after it stopped working, including the solutions in this thread and none worked. What ended up working is doing the screen lock with windows key L, waiting a minute and then unlocking it. I could not believe it. Hours in terminal trying everything and just locking and unlocking the screen fixed it. I found that answer in a different thread about trying to find realtek drivers for NUC on ubuntu, and now I can't find that thread again to thank them.

rcc
  • 19
0

For me, this issue was being caused by the fact that the UID folder for my user wasnt generated in /run/user/, you can check the UID of your user with id -u. I solved it by logging into my user through a TTY, I'm sure theres a better way to solve this though.

This issue was also preventing me from starting up blueman-applet & blueman-manager

demented
  • 1
0

This is my answer by combining two others by Mandeep Yadan and Anisur Rahman in this page.

On my Debian 13 machine here is workaround steps to make sound running.

  1. Stop sound service

Remove new pipewire system.

sudo apt purge pipewire*

So install pulseaudio

sudo apt install pulseaudio

Kill pulseaudio process

pulseaudio -k
sudo pkill pulseaudio

So the pavucontrol now remove all sound device from list and show nothing.

  1. Run sound manually and with daemon

You can run pulseaudio sound system manually by pulseaudio -v to check it.

After ensure all things good you can restarting daemon with

systemctl --user restart pulseaudio.service

Also check service status

$ systemctl --user status pulseaudio.service
● pulseaudio.service - Sound Service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2025-05-07 11:43:03 +0330; 6min ago
 Invocation: 62b382525c5442cfaa87a27a0c91b7ff
TriggeredBy: ● pulseaudio.socket
   Main PID: 131354 (pulseaudio)
      Tasks: 3 (limit: 38140)
     Memory: 8.3M (peak: 11.4M)
        CPU: 10.616s
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pulseaudio.service
             └─131354 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no --log-target=journal

May 07 11:43:02 esmaeel systemd[3238]: Starting pulseaudio.service - Sound Service...
May 07 11:43:03 esmaeel systemd[3238]: Started pulseaudio.service - Sound Service.

Consider enabled feature so your sound daemon service will run automatically in each boot.

  1. Check sound player

Run below command from alsa-utils package to check sound capability on your machine.

$ sudo apt install alsa-utils
$ speaker-test -t wav -c 6
EsmaeelE
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