No sound or bad sound: some audio solutions


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Normally, the audio works properly in Linux Mint. Immediately: out of the box and flawlessly.

But not for some computers; there are number of possible reasons for that. Here I will treat some of the most common causes.


Contents of this page:

Remove speed-dispatcher

1. Your Mint system might contain a package called speech-dispatcher. This ensures that text-to-speech output becomes actual speech hearable in the speakers. It's mainly useful when you use a screen reader, for example because you're visually handicapped.

But speech-dispatcher is known to create sound issues in some cases. When you have no use for a screen reader, it's therefore best to remove speech-dispatcher. Like this:

a. Launch a terminal window.
(You can launch a terminal window like this: *Click*)

b. Copy/paste the following command line into the terminal, in order to avoid typing errors:

sudo apt-get remove speech-dispatcher

Press Enter. Type your password when prompted. In Ubuntu this remains entirely invisible, not even dots will show when you type it, that's normal. In Mint this has changed: you'll see asterisks when you type. Press Enter again.

c. Reboot your computer. Then test your sound.

Sandboxing application Firejail blocks sound

2. If you've installed the sandboxing application Firejail, this may block your sound. Fix it like this (item 4).

Two active sound cards

3. Sometimes there are two active sound cards in a computer: one on the motherboard (a so-called on-board card) and a separate PCI sound card. Or a built-in old-fashioned phone modem: that has its own sound chip, for making calling sounds.

In certain rare cases, Linux Mint has a problem with the presence of multiple active sound cards. Then it's therefore best, to have only one active sound card.

Solution: disable the on-board card (and / or the phone modem) in the BIOS. After you reboot your computer, the sound will come entirely through the PCI card.

If you can't find the disabling option of the on-board sound card (and / or the phone modem) in the BIOS, search the support section of the website of your motherboard builder (or laptop builder) for the manual for your motherboard.

The volume is not right / not all sound channels are working

4. The volume may not be right, or too few sound channels are opened.

a. Install pavucontrol by means of the application Software Manager.

b. Now launch pavucontrol and check the position of the sound channel sliders.

Note: don't put any slider higher than 90% (risk of distortion).

Tip: It may be that the firmware of the soundcard is flawed, so that the slider for the master volume is under a different channel label than usual. Experiment a bit with combinations of open channels....

Brand-new modern sound card

5. You have a brand new modern sound card model, and it has no driver. For brand new models, it's probably best that you wait until a new version of Linux Mint is released. The sound card will then probably work out of the box.

Every six months there's a new version of Linux Mint, each time with a new Linux kernel. The drivers for hardware, are embedded in the kernel.

Firefox: increase the default maximal sound volume

6. The default maximum sound volume in Firefox can be far too low. In that case, you can improve it for HTML5 playback like this:

a. Type in the URL bar of Firefox:

about:config

Press Enter.

b. Now you're being presented with a warning. Ignore it and click on the button "Accept the Risk and Continue".

c. Copy/paste the following term into the filter bar (search bar):

media.default_volume

Change it to 1.5 or even 2.0 (the default is 1.0). Confirm the new setting.

d. You might be able to get better coverage of the new sound setting, by changing another item as well. Repeat the above for the following item:

media.volume_scale

e. Close Firefox and launch it again. The problem should be largely over. Note that this doesn't work in all cases nor on all websites! If it doesn't work, you can always fall back on installing pavucontrol, launching it and setting the sound beyond 100 percent.

Want more tips?

7. Do you want more tips and tweaks? There's a lot more of them on this website!

For example:

Speed up your Linux Mint!

Clean your Linux Mint safely

Avoid 10 fatal mistakes


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