[SOLVED][Mint 18.3 on Laptop] Audio issues: internal speakers not working, mic/jack still recognized and working.

[B0N3M4N]

Hello everyone,

I've been looking around for a solution at this problem, but it seems that everything I've tried isn't working, so here I am posting, just hoping someone could help me with this thing bugging me for a whole month

Basically I've installed Mint around a month ago and, after a kernel update I think, the audio started to not work anymore for my speakers.

I've tried to install pavucontrol, purge and reinstall everything, force-reload the alsa config for the audio, checked alsamix and modified the alsa-base.conf with the model of my laptop(which, by the way, is an Asus GL-553VD). Still getting nothing out of it.

The weird thing is that on the pavucontrol when I plug and pull out the jack it switches from speakers to headphones and so on, everything seems to be giving output and working. I mean everything with the exception that I'm not getting really anything out from my speakers.

As a last thing the Alsamixer recognizes the Chip as a Realtek ALC233, I've found no problems with it on the Internet or in the alsa info page, but I'll put in this info in case it could help to figure out what's going on.

[MrEen]

When the headphones are plugged in, is the sound coming through there?

[MintBean]

Try installing a version that's actually still supported. 13 went end of life years ago.

[MrEen]

I assumed a typo for 18.3.

[B0N3M4N]

When the headphones are plugged in, is the sound coming through there?

Yes, the sound comes out from any headphones linked with the jack, but not from the internal speakers of the PC

I assumed a typo for 18.3.

Yep, definitively. Fixed right now.

[MrEen]

Ok. Lets try an easy one first. In the terminal, type:

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pulseaudio --start

When you get back to the prompt, type:

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pavucontrol

Test your sound.

[MrEen]

Sorry. That's not going to fix anything. Searching ...

[MrEen]

Let's see the output from:

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inxi -A

[B0N3M4N]

Ok. Lets try an easy one first. In the terminal, type:

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pulseaudio --start

When you get back to the prompt, type:

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pavucontrol

Test your sound.

I'm still gonna tell you what I see even if it doesn't fix it tho, still some good infos.

Basically I've already been doing this for a while and I can see that everything is working for the mic(in fact I can talk to others using voice chat apps, and they can hear me), the drivers seems to be the right ones(Analog Duplex Stereo) and there's an "output" shown from the application, but no sound coming out from the speakers.

Let's see the output from:

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inxi -A

Here's the output:

Audio: Card Intel Device a171 driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.10.0-38-generic

[MrEen]

Alright. First, your kernel should be updated to either the last of the 4.13 series, or the last of the 4.4 series for Spectre/Meltdown protection (generally 4.4 if laptop is older and 4.13 if it's newer) The potential exists that this could also fix the audio problem, so we should probably start there.

Keep in mind, this could actually be a hardware problem that coincided with your update. Is this a dual boot that you could boot to the other OS to test? Barring that, do you still have the media you used to install Mint that you could boot to and check there?

[B0N3M4N]

Alright. First, your kernel should be updated to either the last of the 4.13 series, or the last of the 4.4 series for Spectre/Meltdown protection (generally 4.4 if laptop is older and 4.13 if it's newer) The potential exists that this could also fix the audio problem, so we should probably start there.

Keep in mind, this could actually be a hardware problem that coincided with your update. Is this a dual boot that you could boot to the other OS to test? Barring that, do you still have the media you used to install Mint that you could boot to and check there?

For the first question I can say that I'm usually using the 4.13 kernel but I've been asked from the assistance HexChat to try it on the basic kernel and see if the audio worked, sadly it didn't work tho

Fir the second question I can confirm that the speakers are working completely fine on Windows, just tested it right now and no issues at all on the 2nd OS. That said I don't have the usb drive with the Mint Live, so I might have to recreate and try on it.

As much as I remember it seemed to be working for the first month or so, then after the first kernel update it just suddenly decided that it had enough even tho, as much as I've tested, it seems like the problem isn't related to the kernel itself.

[MrEen]

When you posted the result of inxi -A it showed the 4.10 kernel is/was active at that time. So I just thought to start there.

In your OP, you said this: "modified the alsa-base.conf with the model of my laptop". If you mean you added options snd-hda-intel model="your_model_here", try changing it to options snd-hda-intel model=auto Then reboot and test sound.

[B0N3M4N]

When you posted the result of inxi -A it showed the 4.10 kernel is/was active at that time. So I just thought to start there.

In your OP, you said this: "modified the alsa-base.conf with the model of my laptop". If you mean you added options snd-hda-intel model="your_model_here", try changing it to options snd-hda-intel model=auto Then reboot and test sound.

Done what you asked, sadly still no sound coming out of the speakers, jack and mic still working tho

[MrEen]

Ok. let's try this one. Post back the result from:

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pactl set-sink-mute 0 0 ;  pactl list sinks ; lspci -v | grep -A7 -i "audio" ; lsmod

[B0N3M4N]

Ok. let's try this one. Post back the result from:

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pactl set-sink-mute 0 0 ;  pactl list sinks ; lspci -v | grep -A7 -i "audio" ; lsmod

Done it, here's the results(had to use pastebin because it's really long): https://pastebin.com/BVxY492v

[MrEen]

Ok. I'm going to do a little research and see if I can come up with anything else.

[B0N3M4N]

Ok. I'm going to do a little research and see if I can come up with anything else.

Thanks, I've been looking around all day and it's 2:30 AM here, gotta get some good sleep in order to wake up tomorrow.

Good Luck!

Update: I've created an USB live of Mint and I've seen for first that it freezes when I try to start it up without using the nomodeset from the start. After that the installations goes on and it seems like the audio is working on the live version(at least for the first sound it does when it boots, then I tried to open a .mp3 file but it crashed the live kernel).

[MrEen]

At this point, I'm afraid I only have one idea remaining, and you may have already tried it. Go to ~/.config/pulse and delete everything in the folder.

Uninstalling, reinstalling possibly didn't impact those files so it may work.

Otherwise, we'll have to wait for others to help.

Edit to add. Log out/in or reboot after deleting those files.

[MrEen]

then I tried to open a .mp3 file but it crashed the live kernel).

Now that's weird!

[B0N3M4N]

At this point, I'm afraid I only have one idea remaining, and you may have already tried it. Go to ~/.config/pulse and delete everything in the folder.

It worked! I went ahead and deleted everything and rebooted.

Now I first thought I didn't do anything because I tried to test the left and right speakers on the audio tab in the application bar, and it didn't work. Then opening a video or a .mp3 file confirmed to me that the speakers were working and the sound started to come out! I'm quite pleasantly surprised with the outcome of just deleting a bunch of config files

For now I'm just gonna leave the thread open, because it already happened that the speakers started to work from one day to another and then shortly after stopped again, but if nothing weird happens in the next 2 days I'm gonna close it

Again thanks for everything and let's hope that it'd be the last time I have to look around for this problem