[Intrepid] Regression ice1712 doesn't work after upgrade, solved by removing pulseaudio

[Rolf Paloheimo]

Binary package hint: pulseaudio

Upgraded a computer from Hardy to Ibix, sound stopped working. Alsa would not work until I removed pulseaudio using Synaptic

aplay -l would list sound card but alsamixer threw error "No mixer elems found"

sound card is M-Audio 2496

removing pulseaudio fixed it, also had to manually remove "/etc/X11/Xsession.d/70 pulseaudio"

[Shaun Crampton (fasaxc)]

I also found that my sound stopped working after upgrade to Intrepid with an audiophile sound card. I get sound on the GDM greeter screen but then nothing after that. I'm going to try removing pulseaudio to see if that sorts out my problem.

[Shaun Crampton (fasaxc)]

Found the following on the forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1007138. The solution reported there didn't work for me though.

[Shaun Crampton (fasaxc)]

Removing pulseaudio as described above made the sound work for me as well.

[Shaun Crampton (fasaxc)]

Marking confirmed since multiple people are seeing the same problem and the same workaround.

[David Henningsson (diwic)]

If you get sound in some applications and not in others, it could be that pulseaudio is misconfigured. It's a wild guess, but the device ID could have changed between Hardy and Intrepid (due to different kernel versions). If so, I guess the following could help:

1) Backup and then remove the files under ~.pulse.
2) Log out and in again.

If you have several soundcards, this should make sure pulseaudio outputs to the default one (unless default.pa has been tampered with).

[Shaun Crampton (fasaxc)]

To be clearer, I did a fresh install of intrepid to a new partition alongside my old Feisty install so it wasn't really an upgrade. The point I was making was that it used to work in Feisty and now it doesn't in Intrepid. If I get time this afternoon, I'll reinstall pulse and try again. (This computer belongs to my parents and I'm only over for a couple of days so I don't have too much time.)

[David Henningsson (diwic)]

Okay, means my guess was wrong, however it could still be correct for the original poster of this bug.
In any case; for troubleshooting Pulseaudio problems, I've found that pavucontrol utility comes in handy. While some sound is playing, the playback page should display the application playing audio, with a possibility to change both the volume and which soundcard output is redirected to. If pavucontrol does not show anything while the audio is playing, sound is probably not going through Pulseaudio.

[Shaun Crampton (fasaxc)]

Sorry, afraid I didn't get a chance to reinstall pulseaudio in the end and I won't have physical access to the computer for months now. Here's a couple more details that I remember:
  - The GDM greeter definitely had sound (I don't know if it uses pulseaudio).
  - Once on the gnome desktop I didn't get sound.
  - Trying to play an OGG file with rhythmbox caused rhythmbox to become completely unresponsive and I had to kill it with xkill.
  - Changing the sound playing preferences from the Gnome Preferences menu had no effect.
  - For the different settings that I tried pressing the Test button in the sound preferences applet gave an error (return code 3).