No Sound card detected in Sound Settings, although sound works

Question

I have Ubuntu 12.04 installed on my laptop. When I go to Sound Settings while logged into my user, no sound card appears detected.

In spite of this, the sound on my laptop is working ok, and I can use alsamixer just fine. The Unity sound indicator is dead, and this is quite annoying.

If I login as guest, the sound indicator works just fine, I assume it's something related to my user's sound settings, but I cannot find what exactly.

Any clues?

If sound is coming in guest account, the sound card is already detected — Anwar, Jun 24 '12 at 13:45

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 17 '14 at 15:19

1

I had the same problem on my MacBook Pro 8.1 running Ubuntu 12.04. I solved it by resetting pulseaudio user configuration as explained here.

You have to run the following lines in terminal

rm -r ~/.pulse*; pulseaudio -k

and then logout and log back in.

answered Mar 17 '14 at 15:19

aecins

11
1

I got this message on running above mentioned command rm: cannot remove .pulse*': No such file or directory – Junaid Jun 21 '18 at 07:53
try .config/pulse instead of .pulse – radrow Feb 16 '20 at 19:08

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

If you are referring to the problem that, You cannot select sound profile from the sound settings menu, then you can try the following method. I provided the answer in some questions. It works for me, so can also work for you.

Solution 1:

(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!

Solution 2

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.

I had a problem with Sound settings in Ubuntu 12.04 (not being able to switch profile). It fixed now.

Solution 2 : Now I can't see my card in sound settings :( – Yugal Jindle Oct 12 '12 at 18:53 — Yugal Jindle, Oct 12 '12 at 18:53
the realtek drivers site no longer works. – max pleaner Aug 06 '17 at 18:24 — max pleaner, Aug 06 '17 at 18:24

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 14 '12 at 23:14

0

I have had this problem with 12.10 and looked all over. I finally found my answer here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/864735

I modified /etc/default/grub, rebooted and voila!

Hope this helps.

edited Dec 14 '12 at 23:14

Eric Carvalho

54,385

answered Dec 14 '12 at 23:12

Rick B

9

Thanks for contributing this answer! It's generally helpful to quote the most relevant parts of a link (in this case, the instructions on the modification to make to /etc/default/grub) in case the target site is unavailable. – Andrew Johnson Dec 14 '12 at 23:50

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 12 '14 at 01:12

In my case (Dell Latitude E4310 laptop) the problem was the following line in /etc/pulse/client.conf:

autospawn = no

I commented this out, and then ran

pulseaudio -k

and

pulseaudio

and then the sound icon in the taskbar came back to life, and the volume up/down/mute buttons started working.

score -2 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 22 '16 at 19:45

-2

Install pulseaudio-module-udev

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio-module-udev

answered Jul 22 '16 at 19:45

Martin Monperrus

752

2

Why do you suggest it? Please do not post "it worked for me". – Pilot6 Jul 23 '16 at 03:26
-1 That won't help. The PulseAudio setup is already working in the guest account, so installing another package won't change anything. – David Foerster Jul 23 '16 at 14:58

No Sound card detected in Sound Settings, although sound works

5 Answers5

Solution 1:

Solution 2

Linked