Bsrgvty

I'm not exactly describing one problem, because I feel like solving it would be useless.

In the last 3 months I had a HUGE amount of problems with my headphone jack / speakers. I am using Ubuntu 12.04 on an Alienware M17x machine. Ever since I installed Ubuntu 3 months ago, a new sound problem came up every day, here is a short list :

• Without an headphone jack, speakers work fine, but when I put my headphone jack in, sound still plays through my speakers; I have to go through pavucontrol to get the sound to go through my headphone jack (that is actually a very recurrent problem)


• Sound is very low in the headphone jack (barely audible if I go in pavucontrol and put the headphone volume at 150% and the room is quiet).


• Sound goes through both speakers and headphone jack when pavucontrol sets the output to headphone jack


• Microphone input is very low (barely audible as in the previous problem) but the microphone outputs the same thing as my headphone jack is outputting


• etc, etc, etc.

All these problems have one thing in common which pisses me off a lot : I was using my computer (I barely ever turn it off), all the settings were fine at some point, didn't touch anything, and then BAM problem. Very frustrating. I believe a cause might be because updates were done silently while I was using my computer but I admit I never actually noticed that the problems arrived right after an update. Otherwise I have no idea where these magical problems came from.

So here's the question : Why could I possibly get all these sound problems out of nowhere? I am not even bothering to ask how to fix them, because more often than not these problems were fixed by... ''dumb fixes'', i.e. go to some parameter in pavucontrol/alsamixer, switch it on then off (or the opposite) (in other words, doing nothing very special) and then BAM problem fixed. I am sick of these mysteries, as you can see.

Edit

sudo lsb_release -a:

 No LSB modules are available.
 Distributor ID: Ubuntu
 Description: Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS
 Release: 12.04
 Codename: precise

sudo uname -a:

 Linux patrick-M17xR4 3.5.0-41-generic #64~precise1-Ubuntu SMP Thu Sep 12 16:50:04 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

sudo dpkg -l | grep alsa:

 ii alsa-base 1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu1.1 ALSA driver configuration files
 ii alsa-utils 1.0.25-1ubuntu5.2 Utilities for configuring and using ALSA
 ii bluez-alsa 4.98-2ubuntu7 Bluetooth ALSA support
 ii bluez-alsa:i386 4.98-2ubuntu7 Bluetooth ALSA support
 rc gnome-alsamixer 0.9.7~cvs.20060916.ds.1-3 ALSA sound mixer for GNOME
 ii gstreamer0.10-alsa 0.10.36-1ubuntu0.1 GStreamer plugin for ALSA

The command sudo lspci | grep audio outputted nothing.

You can try this guide to help you get back the audio on your PC.

I tried everything to correct the "no sound" issue (Ubuntu 12.04.) I finally stumbled into an easy solution:

1. Right click volume icon (upper right corner.)


2. Click, "Play Sound Through"


3. Test each option listed (e.g., the one that worked for me was "Analog Output/Amplify SD Audigy".)

Hope this helps.

I've found a way which will surely solve your problem of low sound in headphone.

• First play any song so that you can feel the change in sound.



• 
  

  Run this command in terminal:

  
  
  

  alsamixer
  

  
  
  

  if alsamixer is not installed then install it by: sudo apt-get install gnome-alsamixer

  
  



• In terminal itself one interface will be opened as shown here:

_{(source: akamaihd.net)}

• Now use your -> arrow key to reach to option mic select. It is shown in red colour for which it is displaying Mic1 as value. For you it would display Mic2




• Change it to Mic1 by using Up or Down arrow keys.




• Your headphone sound should be increased. If not then try to change (increase/decrease) other values by Up or Down arrow keys.

Hope it would work for you this time..
Reply if you need any further assistance..