Ubuntu – How to stop sound coming from the speakers with a faulty headphone socket

12.04headphonespulseaudiosound

On my laptop, I have a faulty headphone socket, so when I insert headphones into it, the speakers do not mute. I can confirm that this problem is caused by faulty hardware and not software as when I twist the headphone jack, the speakers come on and off according to the movements.

On previous versions of Ubuntu, I worked around this problem by going into alsamixer and disabling "Auto-Mute Mode", and then going into the sound settings and choosing "Analog Headphones". However, on 12.04, no such option exists, rendering my headphones unusable with no way to work around the problem.

I momentarily thought I had this problem fixed when I installed PulseAudio Volume Control from the Software Centre. I selected the Output Devices tab, and under "Built-in Audio Analogue Stereo" I selected "Headphones" for the port. However, this almost randomly seems to change back to "Speakers", despite me setting "Auto-Mute Mode" as disabled.

Basically, I would like a way to permanently mute the speakers so only the headphones will play sound, without it losing my settings. It is ridiculous that such a simple setting has been taken away to "simplify" the user interface.

Best Answer

This is what I did to stop the sound from being played from my built in speakers even when the headphones are connected.

Goto "Ubuntu Software Centre", search for "GNOME ALSA Mixer" and install it.
Reboot the machine if required.
Open "GNOME ALSA Mixer". Check the 'Mute' below the column named "Mono". Uncheck the mute under other columns.
Yippee ! You should now hear sound only from the headphones and not from the built in speakers.

Please try this and let me know if it works for you. This is for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

In case you don't see the column named "Mono", just try this out. In the GNOME ALSA Mixer, check active the headphone Jack Sense tab below the volume control options. This solved the problem for me.

Original Solution

Go to Realtek official site, accept the disclaimer, then download the audio driver for linux/unix. You need to select version 3 for Kernel 3 or later.
Setup necessary tools to compile this driver.

sudo apt-get install build-essential gcc make
Extract the downloaded file, run sudo ./install file from a terminal after going to the extracted folder to compile the driver.
Read the Readme.txt file for more information.
Install gnome-alsamixer by this command.
```
 sudo apt-get install gnome-alsamixer
```
Open the gnome-alsamixer by typing alsamixer in the dash.
Select the "Auto mute mode" in the new window.

Reboot and see whether it fixed now. (Step 6 and 7 might not necessary). Automute will automatically enabled upon restart

Solution 2:

I have just found another solution:

(It worked for me with Only S/PDIF profile, Sound from both headphone and speaker and not being able to switch profile)

Add this ppa by the command

  sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev/alsa-daily

Update packages list. by
```
 sudo apt-get update
```
Then install "alsa-hda-dkms" package:
```
  sudo apt-get install alsa-hda-dkms
```

Reboot, And See the result!

Ubuntu – Ubuntu 14.04 stuck in headphone mode (no sound through speakers)

To fix this problem, I did the following:

Plug in headphones
Click the speaker icon in the top-right and open the sound settings control panel. On the output tab, notice that it list the "Headphones Output" and the "Analog Output" (for you, you may be using Digital Output).
Select your "Analog Output" and click "Test Sound" to open the test sound menu
Click "Test" (either front left or front right), and quickly while the test sound is still playing, unplug the headphones.

This caused the headphone output to properly disappear, leaving the "Analog Output" in a working state.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Stop sound from speakers when connecting headphones

Original Solution

Solution 2:

Ubuntu – Ubuntu 14.04 stuck in headphone mode (no sound through speakers)

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