Ubuntu – Audio suddenly stopped, pulseaudio reinstall has not helped? (14.04)

14.04pulseaudiosound

My audio suddenly stopped working in Ubuntu 14.04 whilst I was playing something off Youtube. I restarted and purged pulseaudio and alsa, reinstalled both and pulseaudio-equaliser as well (which I have been using successfuly in 14.04 since the beginning).

The error output when trying to initialize pulseaudio is:

E: [pulseaudio] module-ladspa-sink.c: Master sink not found
E: [pulseaudio] module.c: Failed to load module "module-ladspa-sink" (argument:"sink_name=ladspa_output.mbeq_1197.mbeq master= plugin=mbeq_1197 label=mbeq control=-0.2,-0.2,-0.2,-0.2,3.5,3.5,3.5,3.5,3.5,3.5,3.5,2.5,2.5,0.0,0.0"): initialization failed.
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Module load failed.
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Failed to initialise daemon.

I have checked another thread with a similar question however the solution seemed to work for an older version of Ubuntu. I have tried that here as well with no luck. (Trying to remove the pulseaudio config files from /usr/etc/pulseaudio) Note: I have found no .pulse folder in my home directory to purge.

Thanks for any help in Advance.

Best Answer

For anybody that comes here in the future, there's a much easier solution to this problem as found here. It worked like a charm for me.

cd ~/.config
mv pulse/ pulse.bak/
pulseaudio --start
cp -rp pulse.bak/presets pulse/

You will see a bunch of errors about files in ~/.config/pulse/ not existing which you can ignore when you start pulseaudio. The presets folder will only exist if you have pulseaudio-equalizer installed (and maybe only if you've already set presets). It just stores your presets so it's not a huge deal either way, but it's nice to copy if you've already put work into your custom presets and want to keep them.

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