Audio Devices Disappear?

[PhysicistSarah]

I just freshly installed Kubuntu 17.10 from a bittorrent image from the Kubuntu.org website, and this has regular audio, but upon a few restarts, audio devices disappear from the list, and there is no sound. I've tried a few solutions and have laid out the details of the problem better (And with nicer formatting) on askUbuntu: https://askubuntu.com/questions/995281/audio-devices-disappear

This appears to be a problem with pulse audio. This is a problem that really effects me, and I would love to solve as fast as possible. Having no sound sucks

NOTE: I'm using Kubuntu 17.10, my hardware information and other system information is available on the askUbuntu post.

[Snowhog]

What rig did you install 17.10 on? Laptop? Desktop? Make and model information. Hardware specifications. Internal or external speakers? If external, Bluetooth, wireless, or wired? All will be helpful in finding a solution.

[PhysicistSarah]

Speakers are both internal (Comes with laptop) and external (USB), I occasionally use a bluetooth headset in combination with a USB bluetooth adapter, but the other speakers and system sound in general are far more of a concern for me right now.

[Rui Óscar]

Hello PhysicistSarah,

I have the same problem after install Kubuntu 17.10. Apparently is a bug of this OS.
Fortunately I found the solution in this forum; you need to remove Alsa and PulseAudio and reinstall them like this:

sudo apt-get remove --purge alsa-base pulseaudio
sudo apt-get install alsa-base pulseaudio
sudo alsa force-reload

Hope this could help you.

[PhysicistSarah]

Wow, nicely done. Sound was restored instantly. I've made a shell script (And I suggest you do as well if this issue persists and keeps coming back) our of it. I'm not sure if the Bluetooth capability is there though. I left my Bluetooth adapter home today since I didn't expect to have any audio. I've installed pulseaudio-module-bluetooth*, I'm not sure if that will restore Bluetooth functionality.

[GreyGeek]

As an old Physics teacher, and seeing your unique pseudonym, I have to ask ... what area of physics has captured your interest?

[PhysicistSarah]

I would say that I'm rather new to physics. I'm still doing my undergrad degree, and choose to invoke the student definition of physicist (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/physicist). I haven't had any opportunity to specialize yet, although I have no idea where I would specialize yet. I have Waves & Optics next physics semester, I just finished with EM. I'm somewhat worried about the industry though, seems like academia is not going to be retiring anytime soon, and I'm worried about the state of R&D if the economic situation in the US worsens due to new frontiers in automation and people not being able to afford things, or potential unknowns with the singularity/approaching singularity over the next 30 or so years.

I've taken coursework in the natural sciences, and by far physics are the most amazing classes I've ever taken. Chemistry is a close second, but physics I feel is way more rewarding, and rigorous. (My brother (Die hard chem major), can barely integrate e^x ) I really like the involvement of the maths too. I feel like my mathematics skills are rewarded here (In my other classes I represented vectors in matrices and used automatic functions on my calculator to simplify calculations and rectangular/polar conversions) after understanding how vectors worked. Chemistry hand-waves much of the mathematics it uses with no explanations, whereas at least in physics, in the classes I've taken, we at least get some sense as to where and why the physical laws come from, and why we can use them mathematically, with an occasional fast derivation for context.

[Qqmike]

I was a math major as an undergrad, class of (19)67. My roommate, Pierre (dual British-French citizen) was physics, specifically astrophysics (cosmology). And, boy, did he ever use mathematics for everything, up to Hilbert spaces, and more. At the time, although I loved all the math he used, I really couldn't get into the astrophysics. But if I had it to do over again, I'd definitely get into the field (along with a dual math specialty).

[woodsmoke]

Rui Oscar nailed it, laptops have always has a problem with sound, nothing new.

Since you are still in school I might gently mention some books that were seminal to my understanding of physics and of course you have NEVER had a teacher recommend books! lol

I'm not saying go into quantum mechanics but I read this on the top bunk of my quad when i was in the navy and it really did put things into perspective. And I quite realize that things have moved on somewhat but this just has a lot of PERSPECTIVE...in it... sometimes we put the emphasis on the wrong syllable... and the context of the sentence helps bring perspective.

Heisenberg Principles of the Quantum Theory

Now this "might" seem like it is kind of...welll...elementary...and it certainly is NOT "rocket science" but it FORCES the reader to introduce ORDER into one's thinking that "taking a course" will NEVER do... Take a look at the chapter headings... ORDER in thinking that then allows one to have the AHA moment!!

the Common Sense of the Exact Sciences

The above might possibly be new to you but the following, I am quite sure is well known...but if it is not...please skip the "later one third" which gets off into an anti-Catholic church rant...the first two thirds really are a ... shoehorn into the mind..lol

Flatland

And of course there is the "old saw" about Lewis Carrol's"Alice in Wonderland"... his mathemaics teatises did not live up to the high drama of the Alice book.

There is a paperback that had the three "iterations" of the story in it but it has fallen off the face of the ...round earth...lol...but one can not go much wrong with the Dover version which is a "photo" version of the original pages...

And, although I cut my teeth on Russel's Human Society in Ethics and Politics it quickly became apparent that he was derivative of others except in his ABCs of Relativity...which...again...may seem just tooo tooo tooo ...juvenile for today's sophisticated audience but...sometimes...again...someone who was close is sometimes most close to the thing...

Also... Bernstein's Experiencing Science is INSULTED by the curt comments that it is a bunch of biographies of famous sceintists... no...

THE MAN WORKED WITH THEM...he writes about...HOW THEY THOUGHT... it really is revelatory...and REVELATORY into YOUR THINKING...because you WILL relate to many of their thinking modalities...

One such small gem is about Hans Bethe that "the Jews" were EXPECTED to be able to READ the Torah when they were...FOUR YEARS OLD... and do "do their sums"...

Now, please put that into perspective... The people who MADE quantum mechanics, relativity, uncertainty principle all that stuff were...DEEPLY immersed in just... addition, subtraction, multiplication and division...it was...to use a flippant term...IN THEIR BONES...

The point here is not that you maybe are not deeply immersed in "math"...

it is that... if one IMMERSES one's self in a subject and the PREcursors to that... one will eventually have...insight...

and...sometimes...as shown by Bernstein...it is just "pluck and luck" but...to quote Louis Pasteur...a fave of mine..I have a very nasty copy of an original impress of his Studies of Fermentation... "chance favors the prepared mind"...

AND I KNOW...you have taken all the Calculus classes there are and did fine...but there is a very old book that was ready by ALL calculus students... which details the details but also the big picture...

For all the "old groaners"...it was kind of like having a "Playboy magazine" in the history book ... it provides PERSPECTIVE... that is often lost in the forest of "math analysis"...Calculus Made Easy

and one last thing...which seems to have been FORGOTTEN, sometimes on purpose, in today's "big" ...science...to quote Gregor Mendel... concerning "data"...that is "derived" from aggregated computer models..."when in doubt, throw it out".

Hey... I hope that you do go into "physics'... and as we say in SCUBA...go ALL IN!!! because the water if fine!!

woodjustahardwarekindaguysmoke

[jlittle]

@PhysicistSarah, GreyGeek, qqmike, I'd prefer to continue this discussion in Community Café -> Out of focus, as it's got little to do with Audio devices or Artful; I'll start a thread there.