Comment 112 for bug 411574

Hey querty800, I (ironically enough) got your comment just fine, and it worked like a charm....

You meant to gunzip the file you referenced in #14 (/usr/share/doc/alsa-base/driver/HD-Audio-Models.txt.gz), and then open it up in a text viewer (gedit, vi, whatever you like) and then look for the sound device descriptor which best fits your system. This can be accomplished by entering the following lines into Terminal:

cd /usr/share/doc/alsa-base/driver
gunzip -c ./HD-Audio-Models.txt.gz > ~/Desktop/HD-Audio-Models.txt
gedit ~/Desktop/HD-Audio-Models.txt

You have to have first done your research on what the model number of your sound device is. There's an app in the Open-Source sections of the Ubuntu default repositories called "Device Manager", obviously a twist on the Windows control panel tool, and it will show you the devices configured on your system (and I'm sure there are other ways of finding this information as well, it's just that I don't know of them yet). Find an entry under Audio Devices labeled ALSA Playback, and look at the Summary pane where it says Sound Device. That should give you some hints as to which section in the aforementioned text file to look. You can get it through:

sudo apt-get install gnome-device-manager

Once you find the name which best (or most generically) describes your device, go into "/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf", and where it says something like:

# Power down HDA controllers after 10 idle seconds
options snd-hda-intel power_save=10 power_save_controller=N

And change that to:

# Power down HDA controllers after 10 idle seconds
# options snd-hda-intel power_save=10 power_save_controller=N
options snd-hda-intel model=$(MODEL)

Where $(MODEL) is whatever sound device name from HD-Audio-Devices.txt.gz most accurately describes your system's audio device. Then, save the file, and run in Terminal:

sudo alsa force-reload

And you should be good to go!