Running Debian sid and it mostly works (still struggling with Nvidia drivers for video). Last night I was watching a video and everything was fine, sound worked. Son was in room “asleep”. I left to use bathroom and then he came looking for me. I don’t know what happened while I was in bathroom but now I hear nothing out of speakers. If I reboot into windows sound works so it’s not a physical issue. Reboot back into Linux no sound. Boot off flash drive Linux, no sound but I think that was always true and was a alsamixer issue on flash drive Linux setups. Volume on YouTube turned to 100, verified not muted, volume in KDE at 100 and not muted. Physical volume on speakers at 100, volume knob on keyboard at 100 and mute not engaged. All volume sliders in alsamixer maxed out. Simple setup, 2.1 speaker system plugged into sound output on motherboard no mixer or fancy equipment.
Son is non-verbal and severally autistic so I can’t ask him. Whatever happened was almost definitely an accident but I can’t figure out what happened. I see like a lighter bar moving on the KDE volume slider which seems to match expected video audio so I believe KDE is receiving the signal to play sound but nothing comes out of speakers. He struggles to feed himself soup or cereal so it’s not like he found some super secret command and is playing joke. Something seems to be accidently hit and is blocking sound… Maybe a mute hot key not synced to main audio controls so it’s not obvious that it’s active???
Edit… This is solved. KDE mixer and alsamixer made no change but changing the output in pavucontrol fixed it. I have no idea why or how. Thanks for everyone who recommended it.
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If you go into KDE’s settings > Sound section, what devices does it show, and what type of output (like “Digital Stereo” or “Pro Audio”) are they set to?
Once in a blue moon, my audio output will get mysteriously changed to a format that does nothing, or the audio controller will go *poof* and I need to manually re-enable it. It’s rare, and I’ve never been able to pin down the exact cause, but it seems more likely after I’ve been connecting and disconnecting alternative audio devices, like my PS4 game controller (which also reads as an audio device due to its headset port), USB microphone (same deal), or USB headphone amp.
After all these years it’s still a pain point.
It’s “digital stereo” currently, I tried all the others no change.
Did you double check that you are outputting to the correct device?
Might have switched to an output you don’t have connected like HDMI or something.
I have every device maxed
But do you have the proper one selected as output? It might be going to your GPU or microphone.
I tried changing it but I’ll try again
This seems like the most likely.
Restart, and if that doesn’t work, sleep on the issue and it will magically fix itself when you wake up. Software is weird like that.
For a more serious answer, they might have accidentally uninstalled PipeWire or PulseAudio (the audio things needed for audio to play). I’ve done that myself before, and you can fix it by reinstalling it. If that’s not the issue, see some of the other answers others have mentioned! There’s a lot of good ones in there
Good old turn it off and then back on approach… Unfortunately I’ve restarted with no change. Pretty sure I’m using pulse audio and it’s still check if it’s still installed
Problem nearly as old as Linux itself:
My suggestion is to try pulse audio volume control (pavucontrol), you get a pretty decent number of options to look through and troubleshoot, in case it’s routing to non-existent display monitor speakers or like a separate headphone jack instead of Lineout, etc.
Pavucontrol fixed it, don’t know why or how but it’s fixed now.
My monitors have (really bad) speakers so I would hear something. I’ll try to install pavucontrol and see if it helps.
Try making the volume really loud, had some devices not working until sound was above a threshold, like an offset, for no apparent reason
Everything is at 100
I had a similar problem and it turned out to be a setting in my KDE Mixer. I wish I could remember exactly which one.
My suggestion, check every setting in the mixer, especially around outputs, slowly and carefully. Try each output one at a time if you aren’t sure which is the right setting.
Your wrong it should be the left setting… Not really but I got a giggle out of the joke
No mate its widdershins
I just called and was told directly by the company “no, this is Patrick”
Does it happen under gnome, or kde with a different user?
Unfortunately these issues are really hard to troubleshoot. Personally if it works under another user, I’d start clearing user configs.
Don’t have gnome installed or another user setup but I can try I guess
Given your emphasis on rooms, am I correct to assume that you have a multi room setup realised via bluetooth or something?
Nope, just a tower pc with 2 speakers and a sub woofer
Maybe a sample rate mismatch somewhere?
How would I detect / fix that?
I think pavucontrol (like the other person suggested) should help with that
