Fixed my sound issues in KDE (no sound except for system events)

Question

First, I'd like to say that I am by no means an expert and what I have below represents nearly a week of installing/reinstalling arch and trying various things to get my sound working correctly in KDE. In fact, yesterday I decided that I was just going to use mint because, even though I don't like it, at least the sound worked for me. I did decide to give it one more try this morning and finally was successful.
My system has an AMD A8-3850 processor, which I never would have bought if I had known all of the compatibility issues I would end up having with it. My problem was that I would hear event sounds in KDE (such as the start up sound) but I would get no sound within my browsers and flash and probably elsewhere. Also, even though I was hearing the system sounds, kmix showed my volume at 0% and that my device was muted. Trying to select the device in kmix didn't accomplish anything at all. Because of this, I had a feeling that the problem was that my sound was defaulting to my HDMI sound, which turned out to be right.
I'll try to be as brief as I can about the process I followed.
The first thing I did was get asoundconf from the AUR. I was then able to set my non-HDMI sound card as the default.
johnr@bitstorm ~ % asoundconf list
Names of available sound cards:
Generic
Generic_1
johnr@bitstorm ~ % asoundconf set-default-card Generic_1
johnr@bitstorm ~ %
From that point, I installed PulseAudio and worked my way through the PulseAudio page on the arch wiki. After which, I was able to bring up the PulseAudio Volume Control (pvaucontrol) and turn off my HDMI sound all together.
Still, my sound did not work, though. After some searching I came to this page: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Softwar … ktops/KDE/ which basically said that my kmix wasn't compiled with with pulse audio support. After a search for kmix on the AUR, I came to this package: kdemultimedia-kmix-git
After installing that, I reboot and all is right with the world... or at least my sound in KDE.
So that's it. I am sorry if this is poorly written, I do not write things like this very often. I was so happy, though, that I was actually able to fix it and I did want to share since I imagine that I am not the only one to have this problem.

Answer 1

Hi @shayanaijaz 
Thank you for your reply.
Here is a link to HP Notebook PCs - No Sound from the Speakers (Windows 7).  You can skip any steps you have previously done.
If after installing the original drivers from the recovery manager you still have an issue with the sound, I suggest you do a recovery back to factory.
HP PCs - Performing an HP system recovery (Windows 7)
During the recovery you will see an option to backup your personal files to prevent data loss.
HP PCs - Restoring Files that were Backed Up Using HP Recovery Manager (Windows 7)
You could also test the audio card just to rule that possibility out.
HP Notebook PCs - Testing for Hardware Failures (Windows 7, Vista)
My last suggestion is to contact HP support for assistance.
Please call our technical support at 800 474 6836. If you live outside the US/Canada Region, please click the link below to get a support number for your region.
World Wide Phone Support
Good Luck!
Sparkles1
I work on behalf of HP
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