Ubuntu – Very low sound, even when I raise the volume on a Realtek ALC882

Run alsamixer -c 0 in your console and use the arrow keys to play around with the volumes.

For me: Setting Master to a value where the sound quality was good enough made it very very low. Setting Master to maximum, decreasing PCM to 81 and setting everything else to 0 fixed the problem.

UPDATE: (for Ubuntu 10.10) Click on the volume icon in the upper-right corner, then click on Sound Preferences, and make sure that the Output volume doesn't go above "Unamplified." Then, click on the volume icon again and see where the volume meter is positioned. That is the maximum volume you should set in order to hear a clear sound.

OR: (for Ubuntu 10.10) Click on the volume icon in the upper-right corner, then click on Sound Preferences, set the main volume to 100% and set the volume for each application to a more appropriate level. Each time you open an application that needs to use sound for the first time, you have to do this (because applications that don't currently use sound don't appear in that list).

You currently have to choose between annoying and complicated :(

Have you tried checking to make sure nothing was muted. In the terminal, type alsaplayer.

Is your volume turned up, or is the speaker muted? Double click on the "speaker" icon in the upper right hand corner of the screen. This will launch the Volume Control application, which has various sliders to control the volume. Make sure that the speaker, headphone and master sliders are not muted, and have the volume up from zero. On a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.10, the Speaker volume is turned all the way down.

You can launch Gnome Volume Control application using Alt+ and type

gnome-volume-control