Trouble with sound

[Steve the Pocket]

So far, for me, out of I think nine boot-ups, it's precisely alternated between having no sound and having sound. Regardless of whether it's a cold boot or a warm boot, and whether or not updates were installed last time. One of those times, it was able to at least detect the digital audio output (presumably HDMI) that I don't use, but all the rest I got the crossed-out volume button. Anyway, the pulseaudio restart does fix it, but I can't wait to see what the source of the problem turned out to be.

[shag00]

@Steve, I do not know what the issue is but it is something that effects many things and is totally random. I also have this issue of every power on is not the same, in my case Discovery pops up every now and then. I have the same issue with powering down, sometimes I get a black screen with Kubuntu on it sometimes not, sometimes it takes 3 seconds, sometimes 1 minute. I have 4 machines, 2 have no problems with sound, 2 do. At least 1 has issues with reading and writing to the same non home directory disk where it takes over 10 times longer to perform a task as opposed to using the home directory. I have issues with having large files open, quite often CPU usage goes through the roof for no apparent reason. I have a suspicion it has something to do with these new AMD processors...

[parmel]

Hi! I also have the same problem. Audio fades, it is not smooth, and it is worse when I connect the headphones. With headphones I do not hear anything, just noise. I do not have pipewire installed. I have re-installed pulseaudio, and nothing. I can not make calls with Hangouts or Teams, which I use a lot and need to share my screen for showing codes (camera works wonderful though).

I also can not connect my bluetooth speaker, which is strange since in my desktop (also with Kubuntu 20.04) I can without any problem (and I used to do it with my laptop with 18.04).

Thank you for your help!

[royleith]

Don't need to kill pulseaudio, found out that running :

systemctl --user restart pulseaudio

Seems to correct the problem, I could pop the above in my profile, but I'd rather understand why it's happening.

Thanks for this. Kubuntu sound was perfect with 20.04, but I decided to upgrade to 20.10.

I had similar problem to the rest of the thread. Sometimes it boots into the correct analogue output plus HDMI 2. Other times, repeated reboots leaves it in Digital Output (S/PDIF) and HDMI 2.

Your command puts it right.

The only good news is that HDMI sound now works with Kubuntu. My bad news is that my HDMI monitor has no sound output port and the most appalling built-in speaker.

[bobbicat]

I ran pipewire --version on my install of Kubuntu 2004 and got the following:

pipewire --version

Command 'pipewire' not found, but can be installed with:

sudo apt install pipewire

So kubuntu 2004 has no pipewire but audio runs okay. [although, to be absolutely accurate, there is a pipewire lib file installed]

Checking out through Muon in Kubuntu Gorilla 2010 shows pipewire is installed, together with some other connected files.

I'm not sure but I think the bug is with pipewire, so this is maybe where bug reports should be aimed?

I'm in Kubuntu2004 as I write this. I'll swap to Gorilla and see what happens if I try that global disable command written above. I'll also try a straight uninstall of pipewire.

[bobbicat]

I'm now in Gorilla.
Purging pipewire solves the audio problem. Reinstalling pipewire reinstates the problem.
Running the following disables pipewire, even after a restart, but leaves it installed but not running.

sudo systemctl --global disable pipewire

I'm trying, at the moment, to find where to post a bug report against 'pipewire'.
Maybe I can find something on KDE forums.

It turns out pipewire is at https://pipewire.org/ maybe this is a place to investigate the reported audio issue.

*later addition* [edited via Kubuntu Hippo]

There are more recent versions of pipewire in the debian repositories

I've also downloaded the daily download Hirsute Hippo and checked out the audio there.
Hirsute Hippo is available for testing and is likely to be unstable.

However I have discovered that the later version of pipewire it uses does appear to be stable.

Gorilla is using an older buggy version of pipewire. I'm not sure if this situation will be remedied. There didn't seem to be anyone around to talk about it on IRC.
Until Hirsute Hippo is released I'll be sticking with Focal Fossa LTS as my main OS, it has given me no problems and does not need to be tweaked.

[shag00]

I think you should go through KDE as it's a packaged product and let them work it out with pipewire.

[bobbicat]

I think you should go through KDE as it's a packaged product and let them work it out with pipewire.

Thanks S.
I have since discovered that pipewire in Gorilla is an old version. There have been quite a few updates since it was released. None of this has got as far as the Gorilla repos, though, I don't even know if it will.

The much newer version in Hippo gives me no problems, but Hippo is pre-release, so not reliable. The Focal version of pipewire although also old works fine so it is probably the best option for now.

For how ever many years I have always installed the latest version of Kubuntu. This is the first time in all that time I have had to hold back to an LTS version. I have been surprised that this issue hadn't been sorted by now.

[Snowhog]

Thanks S.
The much newer version in Hippo gives me no problems, but Hippo is pre-release, so not reliable.

Why would you think that? If you've tried Hippo and are happy with it; it all just works for you; why shy away from installing it?

[shag00]

Just to add a pipewire work around for pulse https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...e/+bug/1897965

[bobbicat]

Why would you think that? If you've tried Hippo and are happy with it; it all just works for you; why shy away from installing it?

I am happy that Hippo contains a version of pipewire that plays nicely with Kubuntu, Snowhog.
It shows that an up to date version of pipewire can work out of the box.

As for Kubuntu 2104 Hirsute Hippo, I have a feeling that Snowhog himself could, nay, certainly should, give reasons why one might 'shy away from installing it'.

At the same time he might also be willing to explain under what circumstances and for what reasons one might wish to find the daily downloads and investigate what is there.

As I have only a little knowledge and as such small knowledge is a dangerous thing I will say no more.
I will defer to those more erudite than myself. To quote Uriah Heep 'I am a umble person'.

To be clear, I have installed Gorilla and Hippo on my hardware, but as neither is ready, in my opinion, to use out of the box at this time, I also have Foss available.

[bobbicat]

Just to add a pipewire work around for pulse https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...e/+bug/1897965

To quote from Muon with respect to pipewire

Canonical does not provide updates for pipewire. Some updates may be provided by the Ubuntu community.

I'm guessing one of these mysterious 'members of the community' would be needed to sort out this issue.
I don't have them abilities or even know them people.
I did spend a little time on IRC but either everyone was afk or there was no-one willing or able to address me or my issue.

I can voice my feelings here but I've not come across anyone willing to admit they could do anything about it.
Maybe no-one can.

I'm guessing Kubuntu Gorilla repo for pipewire needs an update, but that is well outside my ken.

[jglen490]

Therefore, notify the "community" via the Kubuntu/Ubuntu bug process and let them work with it. "They" are the ones who integrate apps into the Kubuntu environment.

[bobbicat]

Therefore, notify the "community" via the Kubuntu/Ubuntu bug process and let them work with it. "They" are the ones who integrate apps into the Kubuntu environment.

Hi jglen490

yup, that's a very good idea,
submitted a bug report quite some time ago using

ubuntu-bug -s audio

as yet, as you might have guessed, there hasn't been any activity, ie it has had no attention.

[shag00]

Hi jglen490

yup, that's a very good idea,
submitted a bug report quite some time ago using

ubuntu-bug -s audio

as yet, as you might have guessed, there hasn't been any activity, ie it has had no attention.

Sounds good in practice but you can refer to my last post above or many of the baloo bugs to get a sense that some problems are just swept under the carpet. I quick google search should leave you in no doubt that this is an issue that effects many people in various ways, in my case I have 4 PCs that have all experienced difficulties but the symptoms are all slightly different. I expect that many people, like myself, expect basic sound and video to work out of the box rather than the shamoozle that has existed since the launch of 20.04 that remains unfixed in 21.02. I have newish or new hardware and one machine is a server which has very little software on it and it still has issues.