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I know this gets brought up like a million times here, but my desktop can't currently detect audio devices while running Ubuntu. I'll provide some system details below, but first I just want to state that I've tried just about every tutorial and similar issue support thread under the sun to no avail (I'll list the ones I know I've tried as well), hence why I'm making my own thread to possibly troubleshoot my specific issues.

I've been struggling with this one for probably over a year now at least and haven't found anything that works. I believe the issue started when I was trying to figure out how to solve a separate issue. That issue was something along the lines of trying to get Ubuntu to recognize both the audio output to my monitor as well as my headset and be able to switch between them, or set one as the default or something like that. It was shortly after that that the device detection issues started. The problem is, I can't remember what I did/changed in that process, and I naively didn't bookmark the articles I used (as I do now) to go back and check.

It's to the point that I'm half tempted to just back up my data and reinstall the whole OS.

System details:

  • OS: Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS
  • Processor: AMD® Ryzen 7 3700x 8-core processor × 16
  • Video Card: NVIDIA Corporation TU104 [GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER] (rev a1)

Driver info (from modinfo nvidia):

firmware:       nvidia/470.223.02/gsp.bin
alias:          char-major-195-*
version:        470.223.02
supported:      external
license:        NVIDIA

I'm also running this is a dual-boot off of an external hard drive that has its own boot loader so I can plug it into other PCs and still have my same OS/setup, though I've never had any issues related to that, but who knows.

I can provide more specifics if desired (though I'm only moderately experienced with Unix, so commands to run would be appreciated)

I've tried pretty much everything from the following articles:

Which included attempting:

  • rebooting pulseaudio
  • reinstalling pulseaudio entirely
  • turning off pulseaudio to use pipewire
  • changing things in alsamixer
  • modifying /etc/default/grub settings (each separately):
    • GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="intel_iommu=on,igfx_off"
    • GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="snd_hda_intel.dmic_detect=0"
    • GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash intel_iommu=on,igfx_off"
  • fiddling with various settings in pavucontrols
  • appending /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf with options snd-hda-intel dmic_detect=0
  • fiddling with settings related to NVidia sound controller
  • using different NVidia driver sets
  • countless system reboots
  • more stuff I can't recall off the top of my head

More detailed description of efforts leading to issue:

As mentioned, this started after attempting to troubleshoot some other audio issues.

I know one was there being some issue with my headset where I had to reconfigure it every time I rebooted or something like that, and wanted to default it to the headset if it was plugged in.

Another issue I believe was that my monitor has audio output, but the audio wasn't outputting through the monitor and I had to do something with the pulse audio config profiles. Something I did in that process has now made it so I only have one profile, 'Stereo Output', and one output device 'Analog Output', though I was already having issues before that.

I think I ran into some other issues as well and tried different things, but can't recall exactly what (big part of the problem), hence why I'm listing anything I can recall trying related to sound.

I have also been able to get sound to play through a headset using the aplay command, though it still didn't play general system audio like music from YouTube or a video game etc...

I also know it's not a hardware issue, as the sound works perfectly fine in all ways whenever I boot up in Windows.

My guess is that in the mix of troubleshooting all the various things I've mentioned, I borked some setting somewhere that now makes all audio not work, or created some mixture of settings that conflict with each other, but I can't recall what that was nor how to find out what it was. So any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Especially if there's a way to just completely wipe everything audio related on the system and start fresh without wiping the whole OS (I'm a software developer and don't particularly feel like having to reinstall all the tools I use daily), but I'm not sure if that's even possible for my scenario here.

I've provided all the relevant info I can think of at the moment, but please let me know if there's any additional I should provide.

Thanks in advance for any help, and if someone figures out a solution I will personally award you at least 10 million internet points.

  • Your biography is useless. The list of "didn't works" is also useless, unless you failed to undo one "fix" before applying the next. In that case, you have "stirred your ststem with a root stick" - reinstall. Please read https://askubuntu.com/help/how-to-ask and https://askubuntu.com/help/formatting . Take the [tour]. – waltinator Jan 22 '24 at 18:07
  • Hey thanks for being really helpful and polite, and not at all condescending or rude. Sorry I tried to provide some context to my specific situation. Anyway, I reached out to the apparently much better tech support of ChatGPT, which ended up giving me the correct instructions to fix my audio. So yeah, thanks for making me not want to interact with this community at all. – Joe Bochinski Jan 29 '24 at 00:43

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