Audio no longer working in Chrome and Opera

Rundi · 02-24-2013, 06:20 PM

Hello,

I am running Ubuntu 12.04. Up until a few weeks ago I could play audio in FireFox, Chrome, and Opera. Something then caused Chrome and Opera to no longer be able to play audio. For example, when I play pandora radio I no longer get sound in either Opera or Chrome where before I did. Also, I get no sound with Youtube videos, etc.

However, sound continues to work in Firefox.

I concluded that something relating to sound had become corrupted. I thought reinstalling the browser would work, but I have reinstalled Opera and I still get no sound. Also, I tried installing Chromium (Chrome except not Google branded) and I get no sound in Chromium either. My conclusion at this point is that some package for sound playing outside these browsers (but not used by FF) has been corrupted and I need to reinstall that package to fix the problem.

But I have no idea what that package/program might be. Any helpful suggestions or pointers?

Thanks so much!

frankbell · 02-25-2013, 07:27 PM

What kind of streaming media, Flash or something else?

If it's not Flash, can you stream the media to an external player, such as VLC?

Try starting Opera or Chrome from the command line, then try to play some media in the browser. Perhaps there will be some error messages thrown to the terminal that cast some light on the problem. If there are, post them here, being sure to surround them with "code" tags, which become available when you click the "Go Advanced" button at the bottom of the "Quick Reply" window.

Rundi · 02-25-2013, 08:06 PM

Hi, thanks for taking the time to respond. I am not sure if Pandora is flash related. Pandora audio does not work (stations plays, but is without audiou even when sound is turned all the way up). Youtube audio on videos is also silent.

I can play audio on Firefox, so I don't have a need to stream on an external player. It just bothers me that what was working before (sound on Chrome and Opera) is now broken. I just started Chrome in terminal and this is the errors I get (it starts up to pandora):

Code:

[7058:7083:0225/210053:ERROR:object_proxy.cc(608)] Failed to get name owner. Got org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Could not get owner of name 'org.chromium.Mtpd': no such name
[7058:7083:0225/210053:ERROR:object_proxy.cc(608)] Failed to get name owner. Got org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Could not get owner of name 'org.chromium.Mtpd': no such name
[7058:7058:0225/210054:ERROR:object_proxy.cc(513)] Failed to call method: org.chromium.Mtpd.EnumerateStorage: object_path= /org/chromium/Mtpd: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.chromium.Mtpd was not provided by any .service files
ALSA lib setup.c:565:(add_elem) Cannot obtain info for CTL elem (PCM,'IEC958 Playback PCM Stream',0,0,0): No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:957:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:957:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:957:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:957:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream

Opened Opera in console and got no error message on start, but then went to youtube and played a video, went back to console and there was this:

Code:

Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Not really sure why Nvidia should be coming up...it is my video card, but I don't see how it is related to sound. Far as I can tell my video is just fine.

So, that's what I have to go on right now. Thanks for your help!

Shadow_7 · 02-25-2013, 08:33 PM

Are you using pulseaudio?

$ pulseaudio --start

And launch the browser(s) with a wrapper.

$ padsp firefox

Otherwise you probably have more than one soundcard and it may be defaulting to somewhere other than where you want it.

$ cat /proc/asound/cards

The 0 device is normally default. pavucontrol to change things with pulse, otherwise you might find some configuration via commandline quirky-ness is needed to resolve your sound issue. If a card other than 0 is your desired default, you can sometimes get away with a one liner .asoundrc file.

file: ~/.asoundrc

Code:

defaults.pcm.card 1

HDMI carries audio, so I would take a guess that that might be where your audio is ending up. So basically your motherboard has a soundcard, your video card has a soundcard, your modem (dialup) probably has a soundcard component, and you probably have an actual soundcard as most of those others kind of suck. And your video card driver is loading first so it gets device 0. You can re-index your drivers by passing parameters to the drivers. Generally in a file in /etc/modprobe.d/ with a .conf ending, and by adding index= and probably vid= and pid= if you have multiple cards with the same driver (like snd-usb-audio).