Totem player - no sound after upgrading to Ubuntu 11.04 [Aspire 7520, Realtek ALC268, Speaker, Internal] No sound at all

[Yuri]

Never a problem in all previous Ubuntu distros with Totem. Only after upgrading to 11.04. Sound indicator is now greyed. Video shows alright but sound is missing. No sound in playing any musical files. Rythmbox and Banshi stopped playing audiofiles too. But other players like Audacious, Amarok, Realplayer - no problem. And SMPlayer plays video and audio correctly!

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: alsa-base 1.0.24+dfsg-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-11.48-generic 2.6.38.8
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-11-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.23.
AplayDevices:
 **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
 card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC268 Analog [ALC268 Analog]
   Subdevices: 0/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Architecture: i386
ArecordDevices:
 **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
 card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC268 Analog [ALC268 Analog]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: yuri 1652 F.... pulseaudio
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'NVidia'/'HDA NVidia at 0xd0880000 irq 21'
   Mixer name : 'Realtek ALC268'
   Components : 'HDA:10ec0268,10250126,00100003 HDA:14f12c06,10250126,00100000'
   Controls : 12
   Simple ctrls : 9
Date: Sun Aug 21 00:40:16 2011
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=ru_RU:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: alsa-driver
Symptom: audio
Symptom_AlsaPlaybackTest: ALSA playback test through plughw:NVidia successful
Symptom_Card: Встроенное аудиоустройство - HDA NVidia
Symptom_DevicesInUse:
 1652 1391 timidity F.... timidity
 ... pulseaudio
Symptom_Jack: Speaker, Internal
Symptom_PulsePlaybackTest: PulseAudio playback test successful
Symptom_Type: No sound at all
Title: [Aspire 7520, Realtek ALC268, Speaker, Internal] No sound at all
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-05-01 (111 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 01/09/2008
dmi.bios.vendor: Acer
dmi.bios.version: V1.31
dmi.board.name: Fuquene
dmi.board.vendor: Acer
dmi.board.version: N/A
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: Acer
dmi.chassis.version: N/A
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAcer:bvrV1.31:bd01/09/2008:svnAcer:pnAspire7520:pvrV1.31:rvnAcer:rnFuquene:rvrN/A:cvnAcer:ct10:cvrN/A:
dmi.product.name: Aspire 7520
dmi.product.version: V1.31
dmi.sys.vendor: Acer

[Yuri (runelena)]

Have just found a way round this bug - before using Totem for audiofiles I start another player - Audacity or Amarok and play some part of a song. After that Totem correctly plays audiofiles. But video and DVD films still do not have sound. Moreover, this trick works only in Classical Gnome graphic environment - and it doesn't work with Ubuntu (Enlightenment).

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

You have timidity running, which is known to interact poorly with pulse. See
the timidity section at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingSoundProblems/KarmicCaveats.

[Yuri (runelena)]

Thanks, Daniel! Modifying config did not help but removing Timidity solved the problem. At a price, though, because Timidity has a good general midi map, allowing other players to play midi-files well. A strange thing is also that in Lucid and Karma there was no problem with Totem used with Timidity. On this machine it started only with upgrading to Natty. For another machine it was enough to change the config file of Timidity as suggested.