Laptop headphone jack produces no sound

Question

The headphones are detected, because when they are plugged in, they appear in the sound settings.

The problem is that they just don't output any sound.

Laptop speakers output sound just fine.

I'm running Ubuntu 16.04 x64

This is the output from running alsa-info.sh:

http://pastebin.com/1aDcq86B

What steps can I take to try and debug this issue myself?

Edit 1

Thanks to @Rexford and this answer, I've worked out how to get detailed debugging output from pulseaudio, by temporarily modifying /etc/pulse/client.conf using the --log-level flag.

I'll report back after I play around with this new information and try to find the problem.

Edit 2

Woke up this morning planning on getting to the bottom of this issue, when I discovered that the sound from the headphones started working.

Last night I had tried many solutions (from various forums and webpages), but was not restarting my computer (was just doing pulseaudio -k && sudo alsa force-reload).

So I guess that the reboot was necessary to make one of the solutions kick in and actually work.

One of the biggest things I tried was uninstalling pulseaudio, installing gnome-audio as a replacement and going back to pulseaudio. So I recommend others try that if they are struggling. Just note that if you do that, you should follow the instructions here to get your volume/sound icon back (if it's missing after reboot - which it was for me).

I can't get to the root of this problem now, because it no longer exists for me.

Edit 3

The problem came back...

Debug logs from pulseaudio don't reveal anything useful (e.g. error messages).

According to this diagram, alsa is the next stop to check for the cause.

First, is your headphone working? Try with another device to confirm! Second, is your laptop jack working? Try another headphone to confirm! If headphone and laptop jack is working, then back to software. Thinking of what could go wrong, but check the above and let's see. — KhoPhi, May 06 '16 at 12:48
Headphones work fine in my phone and have also tried another working pair of headphones in the laptop. — pleasedesktop, May 06 '16 at 13:00
Okay, thanks. Please, have you seen this? http://askubuntu.com/questions/219342/no-sound-output-from-headphone-jack-ubuntu12-04?rq=1 — KhoPhi, May 06 '16 at 13:09
I had not. This is what I was looking for (ability to get more detailed debugging information about what is going on with regards to sound), Thank you very much, I'll update my answer. — pleasedesktop, May 06 '16 at 14:41

score 78 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

78

This answer appears to be working for me, but I have not investigated why yet.

To repeat the solution, just run this command in a shell (no root needed):

alsactl restore

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

Community

1

answered Feb 17 '17 at 22:40

pleasedesktop

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This works for me too and I don't understand why! Scary! – Jun 01 '17 at 02:53
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Worked for me as well. I lost the sound on my headphone after I upgraded my linux kernel from 4.4 to 4.12, on my dell xps 13 (9360) running on ubuntu 16.04. – edelans Aug 08 '17 at 13:31
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Didn't work in my case... – Dr_Zaszuś Oct 12 '17 at 15:11
@Szczypawka yeah sometimes it does for me and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes rebooting after running that command helps. – pleasedesktop Oct 15 '17 at 22:55
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Did not work for me. – a coder Feb 26 '18 at 19:31
This worked on Ubuntu 16.04 after a botched up session with QjackCtl created all sorts of troubles with the headphone. – R.S. Oct 11 '18 at 21:34
This worked for me (restoring sound driver configuration) – user3375672 Mar 19 '20 at 08:15
work for me, Ubuntu 19.10 Gnome classic 3.34 – Dong Nguyen Mar 20 '20 at 14:43
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Still needed/works on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – Josh May 12 '20 at 16:04
This answer also worked for me. My situation was I was logged in with one user, then logged out and logged in with another user. Headphones were mute, but speakers and HDMI sound output was fine. alsactl restore worked. – Alexandre Schmidt Sep 08 '20 at 23:03
From man alsactl, it says: alsactl - advanced controls for ALSA soundcard driver. Then for this specific command: restore loads driver state for the selected soundcard from the configuration file. If restoring fails (eventually partly), the init action is called. – n1k31t4 Feb 28 '21 at 21:13
Works for me on Ubuntu 20.04 ! Thanks a lot!! – Nocturnal Mar 05 '21 at 06:07
Works for me on Ubuntu 20.04, but the sound plays both on head phone and laptop speaker. – Nocturnal Mar 05 '21 at 07:44
fixed it for me! – gannex Nov 10 '22 at 22:54

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 03 '22 at 19:02

I had the same problem with Ubuntu 20.04, I fixed the issue by removing and reInstall ALSA and PlusAudio into Ubuntu Like the suggestion from this article.

Here are Linux Commands for Remove and ReInstall:

sudo apt remove --purge alsa-base pulseaudio
sudo apt install alsa-base pulseaudio

Then You can Reload ALSA again(Optional Step) from the same article again:

alsactl restore

Or Using force

sudo alsa force-reload

Laptop headphone jack produces no sound

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