["SOLVED"] PulseAudio - some applications won't output sound sometimes

So, I have KDE 4 and PulseAudio installed, with VLC as Phonon's backend software.
After startup, I often find that Skype won't output sound at all for seemingly random periods of time. This also often happens (sometimes simultaneously, but not necessarily) to Chromium. Pavucontrol and the KDE audio mixer, don't show anything useful at all in terms of the output of Skype and Chromium, and messing with master output in Pavucontrol doesn't affect anything.
After a completely random period of time (usually a very long period of time), these applications start outputting sound again. It's very frustrating, and restarting the applications doesn't help whatsoever. While these two applications are affected, all other applications output sound perfectly.
I don't even know. I've searched, but I haven't found any similar problems documented elsewhere. Any advice?
EDIT: Solved, for now.
Last edited by Archimaredes (2013-03-14 20:22:04)

I fixed it (for now, at least!)
I ran the below command:
$ cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [U0x46d0x804 ]: USB-Audio - USB Device 0x46d:0x804
USB Device 0x46d:0x804 at usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.2, high speed
1 [MID ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel MID
HDA Intel MID at 0xf9ff8000 irq 47
2 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xfbd7c000 irq 17
Basically, my USB webcam, which also acts as a microphone, was being treated as my default sound card. I changed this by creating a file in /etc/modprobe.d with the following:
options snd-hda-intel index=0
Which set my real sound card as default:
$ cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [MID ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel MID
HDA Intel MID at 0xf9ff8000 irq 47
1 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xfbd7c000 irq 17
2 [U0x46d0x804 ]: USB-Audio - USB Device 0x46d:0x804
USB Device 0x46d:0x804 at usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.2, high speed
The problem isn't ENTIRELY fixed. Skype's still being a bit buggy, but at least Chromium is now playing sound, including in Flash media. Strangely enough, after playing a Flash video (e.g. on YouTube), Skype's sound seems to fix itself if it's defunct.
Last edited by Archimaredes (2013-03-14 20:23:49)

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Media applications fail to output sound. [SOLVED]

The issue here seems to be that for some reason or another applications such as VLC, Nightingale, clementine and amarok fail to output sound while system sounds, flash media, and notification sounds from applications such as Skype and Thunderbird continue to work. With each of the music players respectfully there seems to be an error output that amounts to not being able to connect to the sound device. As nightingale is what I currently have installed, the error output is such when I attempt to play any sort of media.
Configured audiosink audiosink-bin is not working.
I am using E17 after formerly having used KDE however I had similar problems with the initial install that were fixed after setting the default device in alsamixer.
The output of aplay -l is as follows
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic_1 [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: ALC269VB Analog [ALC269VB Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
lsmod | grep '^snd' | column -t
snd_seq_dummy 1463 0
snd_seq_oss 28970 0
snd_seq_midi_event 5660 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 49946 5 snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_dummy
snd_seq_device 5180 3 snd_seq,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_dummy
snd_hda_codec_realtek 30893 1
snd_hda_codec_hdmi 29298 1
snd_hda_intel 35816 0
snd_hda_codec 145920 3 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep 6364 1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm 76860 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel
snd_page_alloc 7330 2 snd_pcm,snd_hda_intel
snd_timer 18687 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd 58893 10 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_device
Every thing seems to be loaded correctly and speakertest -c 2 seems to be working. The problem I had last time was with flash blocking sound output from other programs, but this problem subsided after having correctly set my default with alsamixer. I began to have the problem of flash blocking other applications from outputting sound when a browser was open a couple of days ago, but this has somehow progressed to any media application failing to output sound at anytime regardless if a browser has been opened or not. I uninstalled flashplugin and now rely on the plugin packaged within chrome but the problem persists. Any suggestions? I have read the wiki on alsa and on the flash plugin and have searched around but have found nothing that addresses my problem or that I have not already implemented or tried.
EDIT: It seems that I have gotten vlc to start working again. The issue here seems to be that /etc/alsa.conf had been marked by pacman as /etc/alsa.conf.pacorig and renaming it and setting vlc to output directly to the default device instead of having set to default has gotten sound working for it again. It seems the only problem that remains and I have gotten this error is other applications and it is probably the problem behind XBMC not playing audio but the audiosink-bin is not working error is most likely the source of the additional problems. I will look into it and see if I get any reply in the meantime.
EDIT: Due to something beyond my intelligence it seems that nightingale now plays sound and can even do so with chrome and a youtube video open. I am guessing the problem lied in the gstreamer plugins and when I removed all of my orphaned dependencies that may have been what had done it, something may have been in conflict or maybe just from the couple of reboots I have had since then. I did reinstall the plugins but there was a package that was removed called smpeg and another called sdlmixer those may have had something to do with it. So the moral of this story is to remove orphans on a regular basis, which I have been doing but just got around to today. If anyone has any input, which I doubt at this point. I will mark this as solved
Last edited by agahnim (2013-07-04 00:45:35)

I fixed it (for now, at least!)
I ran the below command:
$ cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [U0x46d0x804 ]: USB-Audio - USB Device 0x46d:0x804
USB Device 0x46d:0x804 at usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.2, high speed
1 [MID ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel MID
HDA Intel MID at 0xf9ff8000 irq 47
2 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xfbd7c000 irq 17
Basically, my USB webcam, which also acts as a microphone, was being treated as my default sound card. I changed this by creating a file in /etc/modprobe.d with the following:
options snd-hda-intel index=0
Which set my real sound card as default:
$ cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [MID ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel MID
HDA Intel MID at 0xf9ff8000 irq 47
1 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xfbd7c000 irq 17
2 [U0x46d0x804 ]: USB-Audio - USB Device 0x46d:0x804
USB Device 0x46d:0x804 at usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.2, high speed
The problem isn't ENTIRELY fixed. Skype's still being a bit buggy, but at least Chromium is now playing sound, including in Flash media. Strangely enough, after playing a Flash video (e.g. on YouTube), Skype's sound seems to fix itself if it's defunct.
Last edited by Archimaredes (2013-03-14 20:23:49)

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[SOLVED] PulseAudio Volume Control won't start anymore

Hi!
As described in the title, PulseAudio Volume Control won't start from one day to another.
I have no clue where this could come from or what I could have done wrong to create this issue.
Here is how it looks like:
When I start it, it seems to be loading but after some time it just disappears and nothing happens.
I also have the same looking issue with KMix and Google Music Manager.
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Last edited by StefanMu (2014-01-10 01:15:24)

Rasi wrote:StefanMu, you are not giving enough details. Have there been any updates, that are pulse or gtk related. What versions do you have installed of gtk, gtkmm, libpulse, pavucontrol. Are all of those repository packages, or is something built from AUR? Any custom repositories?
Hi, and thanks for your reply. Here are the details:
gtk:
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Name : gtk
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gtkmm:
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libpulse:
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Name : libpulse
Version : 4.0-6
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Architecture : x86_64
pavucontrol:
[root@ACDCROCKS-ARCH_LINUX miniclip22]# pacman -Qi pavucontrol
Name : pavucontrol
Version : 2.0-2
Description : A GTK volume control for PulseAudio
Architecture : x86_64
They are all repository packages, NOT from the AUR. As previously mentioned, this is a fresh install, so I don't have any custom repositories. Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Last edited by miniclip22 (2013-12-28 18:42:12)

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["SOLVED"] PulseAudio - some applications won't output sound sometimes

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