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I'm running 13.10 (all up-to-date) on a Lenovo laptop with a Griffin iMic USB audio device. Though I occasionally have to use the Pulse Audio volume control tool to re-select the iMic, it works consistently from everything on the system except Chrome, which basically has no audio at all.

With most applications that want to use the audio stuff, you see something in the first tab of pavucontrol. Not Chrome; there's just nothing.

Some ancient forum posts here and there suggested symlinking the Firefox "plugins" directory over to Chrome's installation directory, which seems pretty goofy and which doesn't work now anyway.

Chrome version is 34.0.1847.132.

Is there some trick to making Chrome work with a USB audio device? (As far as I can tell it doesn't work with built-in audio either ...)

edit — Still not working, now on 14.04 and Chrome 37.0.2062.120

More info:

Chrome's been reinstalled more than once, with no effect. I've also tried the beta (currently Chrome 38.0.2125.77 beta). The PulseAudio manager tool, in its list of clients, shows Firefox and various other things, and also "Chrome input" but no "Chrome output".

Chromium behaves exactly the same way.

edit — now on an (old and tired) 15.04 installation. Chrome (Version 49.0.2623.112 (64-bit)) still does not work, though on full moon nights or something else random it'll send sound through the built-in analog audio on the laptop. However, Chromium (Version 48.0.2564.82 Ubuntu 15.04 (64-bit)) does work now, and it works through the USB audio device. I don't know of any particular thing I've done lately to make that true, but

Pointy
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    Is Chrome muted in the sound settings? – s3lph Sep 26 '14 at 20:48
  • @the_Seppi no, it isn't, as far as I know. I'm running xfce4 as my desktop; I don't even know where such a settings panel (or config file) might be. – Pointy Sep 26 '14 at 20:55
  • Execute (and install, if not found) xfce4-mixer from a terminal. – s3lph Sep 26 '14 at 20:57
  • @the_Seppi well that gives me volume control etc, but it has no effect on Chrome. (Thanks for the suggestion however.) – Pointy Sep 26 '14 at 21:01
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    Does it only apply to Flash or also everything else? http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_video.asp Watch this video. If you hear anything, it's a Flash problem. If not, it's really Chrome-related. – s3lph Sep 26 '14 at 21:08
  • @the_Seppi works fine in Firefox, not at all in Chrome. Youtube and Vimeo work in Firefox, not in Chrome. Amazon music previews work in Firefox, not in Chrome. Using a freshly-created test user with Chrome (so, no saved config) doesn't work either. I'm of the opinion that it's a Chrome issue :) – Pointy Sep 26 '14 at 21:21
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – s3lph Sep 26 '14 at 21:21
  • Check if this is a known bug with Chrome/Chromium, and if there doesn't already exist a bug, feel free to file a new one. Note that this is not a bug with Ubuntu or any other program or driver. – Claudia Sep 26 '14 at 23:37
  • did you try to reset chrome config: copy and run this command in a terminal :mv ~/.config/google-chrome ~/.config/google-chrome_bak – laugeo Sep 28 '14 at 18:52
  • @impinball I agree - I've managed to get all sorts of audio stuff working on this machine (in fact playing with SuperCollider and Overtone today) but the only thing consistently broken is Chrome (and Chromium). – Pointy Sep 28 '14 at 19:40
  • @laugeo yes I did, but thanks for the suggestion. – Pointy Sep 28 '14 at 19:40
  • did you look at this - http://askubuntu.com/questions/284202/chromium-doesnt-play-sound – Panther Oct 01 '14 at 04:02
  • @bodhi.zazen yes, no luck. Thanks for the suggestion however. – Pointy Oct 01 '14 at 14:18
  • If that did not resolve the problem then, IMO you are should file a bug report with chrome as Ubuntu seems to be working and chrome is not in the Ubuntu repositories. – Panther Oct 01 '14 at 14:20
  • Even 15.04 is long past EOL -- you should at least update to 16.04 to see if the problem resolves. – Zeiss Ikon Aug 14 '18 at 12:11
  • @ZeissIkon this question was from 4 years ago :) – Pointy Aug 14 '18 at 12:21
  • Huh. It showed up as "modified X minutes ago" right before I commented... – Zeiss Ikon Aug 14 '18 at 12:27

10 Answers10

138

I had the same problem. It ended up being that my system was trying to put Chrome's sound through the HDMI even though the HDMI chord was not plugged in at the time. Presumably, this could happen with any audio output device. The sound settings Ubuntu offers didn't show this nor let me change it for the individual application, but pavucontrol did.

To install pavucontrol from the Terminal:

sudo apt-get install pavucontrol

To open pavucontrol from the Terminal:

pavucontrol

Select the "Playback" menu and make sure that you have it set to Show Applications. Now, start playing something from Google Chrome. It will show up there, and it will show what output device is being used for Google Chrome. Make sure it is set to the output device you are trying to use.

Colonel Trogdor
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    Thank you so much for this! I suspected this to be the issue after sound from half my apps disappeared after I had connected then disconnected the laptop to a screen via HDMI, but the default Unity control center doesn't show which outlet the sound was going out from on a per application basis. – Yi Jiang Mar 01 '17 at 06:50
  • Repeat these steps for microphone input if you're also having issues with that. A good site to test on is onlinemictest.com – Zaz Dec 21 '17 at 00:40
  • Perfect, this way I didn't have to kill pulseaudio or remove pulseaudio configs. pavucontrol still seems to work fine under 18 LTS as well. – jerome Sep 01 '18 at 10:22
  • I would just like to say thank you so much because pavucontrol worked for me :D It seems the sound controls failed to default back to "Built-in Audio" after using HDMI. – Robin Hood Oct 16 '18 at 19:11
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    Thanks a lot, not all heroes wear capes nowadays – Tri Nguyen May 24 '19 at 06:59
  • Thank you so much. This works for me on Ubuntu 16.04 – Gabriel Amazonas Mesquita Jul 11 '19 at 21:50
  • things only Linux could provide – Victor Ferreira Jan 15 '20 at 20:58
  • Thank you, finally fixed it. 20.04 LTS, almost a decade later and the issue still persists, this is insanity. – Kef Apr 13 '22 at 21:25
60

This work for me (Ubuntu 14.04):

killall pulseaudio
rm -r ~/.config/pulse/*
rm -r ~/.pulse*

And reboot.

These commands will stop pulseaudio and remove its current configuration, to start with the defaults again.

ONeZetty
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Before wiping out the entire Chrome configuration directory, try this: switch to another audio output device and then switch back to the original one. If you have only one audio device, connect an external one (like HDMI or USB audio) and then perform the above trick.

Update The following seems to prevent the problem from reappearing in the future:

  • Edit /etc/pulse/default.pa, find the line that starts with load-module module-stream-restore and add restore_device=false at the end so that the line looks like this:

    load-module module-stream-restore restore_device=false

  • Do killall pulseaudio

revl
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    Switching to a different audio output and back solved it for me. Thanks! – Edson Medina Oct 30 '18 at 17:18
  • Switching also worked for me, but I also did the configuration removal of ~/.config/pulse as described above, however, that didn't work until I switched the audio input to something else and back. I did not change /etc/pulse/default.pa – Richard Logwood Jul 04 '20 at 13:51
  • I had the same issue as OP on Ubuntu 22.04. I found the included Pulse Audio Volume Control gui's Output Devices tab had an entry for Chrome with output going into HDMI (even though my overall system output was set to output to headphones).

    Unfortunately, the setting would re-appear on the next reboot. The solution above (the part after the Update) stopped it from re-occurring on re-boot.

     – Antoine Dahan May 29 '23 at 22:04
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I had a similar problem. My laptop had two sound cards, one for built-in audio from the laptop speakers, the other to come through the hdmi output. When I was playing music or something that used the browsers sound, it was channeling the sound through the hdmi channel. From the kmix sound manager, I could see that chrome was listed in the playback streams but if you right clicked on the chrome icon and select move, there was an option to change the audio output for the stream. I made sure it wasn't hdmi, since I wanted the sound to come from my speakers or headphones.

Juan
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None of the above worked form, been without sound in chrome for a week. Then I started SMplayer, no sound also, Options>Pregerences>Audio switched from pulseaudio to alsa.

Next time I started chrome sound works.

Dražen Tiga Klepac
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Chrome comes with an integrated flash player and it does not always work well.

If you have sound with Firefox on websites like youtube or deezer, maybe you already have a Flash player on your system: the package "flashplugin-installer".

If not:

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

Then, you can set which Flash player you want in Chrome's plugins setting:

  • open a new tab, type chrome://plugins instead of a URL
  • click on details on the right,
  • select Adobe Flash Player
  • you will see two different "sub" plugins
  • disable the current one and enable the other one
  • restart Chrome

You can also find a short video about how to do it with on Chrome for Windows, this is the same way in Ubuntu:
http://youtu.be/cDgwNzEFuFY

ttoine
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  • Thanks, but as far as I know modern versions of Chrome don't support the old Netscape plugin API any more. I have flashplugin-installer installed on my system, but with Chrome the only Flash option available is PepperFlash. – Pointy Sep 29 '14 at 19:35
  • You are right, since Ubuntu 14.04, Chrome and Chromium can not use anymore the Netscape plugin API. Maybe you should follow this tutorial ? http://itsfoss.com/fix-flash-player-issue-chromium-in-ubuntu-14-04/.

    However, my answer should be good for Ubuntu 12.04

     – ttoine Oct 03 '14 at 11:39
  • I've got Pepper Flash installed and updated already, thanks. – Pointy Oct 03 '14 at 12:41
  • you tell you re-installed Chrome many times. But did you delete the .config/google-chrome folder in your /home ? – ttoine Oct 03 '14 at 12:46
  • Yes, I have tried Chrome with freshly-made user accounts and after removing my own .config directory. This problem has been going on for almost a year, so I've had plenty of time to experiment :) – Pointy Oct 03 '14 at 12:52
  • do you have sound with the integrated sound card of the laptop ? – ttoine Oct 03 '14 at 12:53
  • I do from all other software, but not Chrome. – Pointy Oct 03 '14 at 13:00
  • the Griffin iMic USB audio is the integrated sound device ?? – ttoine Oct 03 '14 at 14:38
  • actually sometimes I do have sound from the integrated device. I happened to be using chrome the other day and was stunned to hear audio coming from the laptop. – Pointy Sep 02 '15 at 13:29
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Check you are running the right architecture of Chrome.

I had i386 Chrome installed on a 64 bit system and had this issue. When I uninstalled and installed the 64bit version, audio worked fine.

Alex
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I had the same problem you may not notice any issue immediately after i install chrome-remote-desktop problem occurs after i reboot my pc. so following worked for me. I am using : Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

  1. sudo apt-get autoremove chrome-remote-desktop
  2. killall pulseaudio rm -r ~/.config/pulse/* rm -r ~/.pulse*

copy and past each line in the terminal. Hope it helps

Afsal
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A simple reinstall of Chrome worked for me on Ubuntu 14.04.

sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable --reinstall

Kidquick
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Yesterday you might have simply right-clicked a tab, and selected "Mute site", and forgot about it. Now e.g., none of YouTube's videos have sound!

Perhaps you got a phone call while watching a video, just before leaving work.

So simply right click the tab, and click "Unmute site"!

Dan Jacobson
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