Sound not working -- Tried everything

Question

Just installed Arch Linux for x86_64 and have XFCE 4.8.0 up.
My problem is that audio doesn't work from the speakers.
When I plug in my headphones to the jack, I can hear the audio fine. But the speakers on my monitor won't work.
Note: every thing worked fine with Ubuntu 11.04 with the same hardware.
Here's relevant info:
lspci
aplay -l
lsmod|grep '^snd' | column -t
ls -l /dev/snd
sudo cat /proc/asound/modules
I hope I've provided enough information. I did follow the wiki on Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, yet to no avail I come to you.
Please help me out.
Last edited by jasonwryan (2011-08-09 03:28:33)

Answer 1

maybe the output is muted. Check your volume mixer for any muted channels.
OR
run alsamixer from a terminal and (to remove all doubt) unmute every channel. A channel is not muted if the 00 at the bottom of the volume bar has a green background. This can be toggled by pushing 'm'. Also make sure to use the arrow keys to go as far left and right as you can. Some bars can hide out off screen.
If that doesn't work, try the function key 'f6' within alsamixer to select any other sound cards alsa has registered. The volume you need to mess with might not be default.  e.g. if somehow the default card is something like a built in webcam mic.
Esc quits alsamixer
alsamixer is included in the package alsa-utils.
I don't know if xfce4-mixer exposes all the options alsamixer does (or if it provides even more)
Edit: potentially useful check
amixer|egrep '^[^ ]|\[(off|on)\]'
or
grep -P "\t(name|value)" /var/lib/alsa/asound.state
Last edited by _will (2011-08-09 03:41:27)