Ubuntu – Can’t hear sound from the speakers – any ideas

alsapulseaudiosound

I have a Dell Inspiron N5110 that won't play sound. To be more specific, I can't hear any sound from the speakers when running Ubuntu 16.04. I also dual boot Windows 7 on the machine and sound works fine there.

Here is an exhaustive list of screenshots, command output, and troubleshooting information:

Hardware

$ lspci
...
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)
...

pavucontrol

enter image description here

alsamixer

enter image description here

pactl info

Server String: /run/user/1000/pulse/native
Library Protocol Version: 30
Server Protocol Version: 30
Is Local: yes
Client Index: 7
Tile Size: 65472
User Name: nathan
Host Name: nathan-laptop
Server Name: pulseaudio
Server Version: 8.0
Default Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
Default Channel Map: front-left,front-right
Default Sink: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo
Default Source: alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo
Cookie: 1da0:01c2

ps aux | grep pulse

nathan    5952  1.5  0.1 416424 10576 ?        S<l  16:01   0:00 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog

dmesg | grep snd

[    8.215325] snd_hda_codec_idt hdaudioC0D0: autoconfig for 92HD87B1/3: line_outs=1 (0xd/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0) type:speaker
[    8.215330] snd_hda_codec_idt hdaudioC0D0:    speaker_outs=0 (0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)
[    8.215333] snd_hda_codec_idt hdaudioC0D0:    hp_outs=1 (0xb/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)
[    8.215335] snd_hda_codec_idt hdaudioC0D0:    mono: mono_out=0x0
[    8.215337] snd_hda_codec_idt hdaudioC0D0:    inputs:
[    8.215340] snd_hda_codec_idt hdaudioC0D0:      Internal Mic=0x11
[    8.215342] snd_hda_codec_idt hdaudioC0D0:      Mic=0xa

Let me know if more information is needed and I can easily add it to the question.

Further Updates

  • ALSA doesn't seem to be working at all — aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Right.wav was completely silent

Best Answer

I had problems with my audio recently on an HP laptop. After reading a few articles, I installed pulseaudio and kmix, updated everything, rebooted and then everything was fine. I am pretty new to this so this may be a long way round but it worked for me. 

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio 
sudo apt-get install kmix
sudo apt-get update

Reboot and everything worked for me. Hopefully this may have helped.

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