How To Fix: No Sound In Ubuntu And Linux Mint

Ubuntu 13.04 has been released with lost of eye-candy and performance boost. As it happens with every Ubuntu release, you install or upgrade to a newer Ubuntu version and run in to a number of problems. But then, there is always a way to overcome these big little problems. One of the most common problems faced is no sound after installing Ubuntu.

While there could be several reasons for no sound in Ubuntu, I will share the trick which worked for me. Let’s see in steps how I fixed and how you can fix it.

Steps to fix no audio in Ubuntu:

First step, just to verify, check if the sound is not muted. Once you verify this, go to Sound Settings:

In the Sound Settings, you’ll find that you have practically nothing here except a dummy output. Quite frustrating. It means that your sound card is not even recognized. Puff!

No worries. The one shot solution which fixed the sound problem for me on my Intel powered Dell Inspiron N4010 is to force reload Alsa. To do that, use the following command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo alsa force-reload

The output will be like this.

You may think that it is hanged or still in processing but it takes only couple of seconds. You can simply close it afterwards by using Ctrl+C. Now, you need to reboot your computer. If at the next start up, you hear the login sound at the lock screen, you know it worked like a charm.

First Alternate method to fix no sound in Ubuntu:

If the above problem did not fix it for you, try reinstalling Alsa and Pulse audio in the following manner:

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

sudo apt-get install alsa-base pulseaudio

And force reload Alsa again:

sudo alsa force-reload

Restart and enjoy the world of sound, again.

Second Alternate method to fix no sound in Ubuntu:

Open the terminal and edit speech-dispatcher file by using the following command:

sudo gedit /etc/default/speech-dispatcher

In here, change RUN=yes to RUN=no

Reboot and enjoy the sound.

If it fixed your sound problem, you may want to fix brightness issue as well. Fixing the sound problem is definitely one of the must to do things after installing Ubuntu 14.04. Any questions, suggestions or a world of thanks to keeping me motivated can be dropped in the comment section. Stay tuned for more Linux tutorials and tips.