Upgrade went fine, everything went smooth. Had sound yesterday...today GONE. System->Prefs->Sound no longer shows a sound card. BUT if I boot from the CD it's detected and working (On Board Audio).

aplay -l returns
aplay: device_list:223: no soundcards found...

lspci -v | less (sound sec only returns)

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 05)
Subsystem: Gateway 2000 Device 500d
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
I/O ports at e800 [size=256]
I/O ports at ef00 [size=64]
Kernel driver in use: Intel ICH
Kernel modules: snd-intel8x0


modules are installed

What am I missing?

Have you tried http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=205449

I did a fresh install of Karmic on a system that was working fine with Jaunty, and had no sound for a system with on-board intel audio.

For me, the answer was that the channel with the sound (channel 2 I think) was muted for some reason, and I unmuted it using alsamixer in a shell. See the section entitled 'Using alsamixer' for details.

It is probably worth working down the instructions from the top though.

Hope this helps.

Ed

Welcome to the club. I solved the problem by doing a fresh install of 9.10 (and reformatting that partition to remove garbage left behind). I also changed to the 64-bit version at the same time. I think the 32-bit upgrade has problems if you actually have a 64-bit machine.

Same here: no sound. And no dsl network available, which means I have no internet at home. Wish I hadn't upgraded!

I had the same problem with sound after upgrading my ThinkPad notebook, but found the volume control level was set to minimum after the upgrade.
It appears 9.10 has acquired some new problems with some ATI video cards though, and I also experienced frequent kernel crashes for the first 24 hours, but they have mysteriously ceased now. Perhaps just a mild case of colic after giving birth to a new OS version?

I've also had similar sound problems after an upgrade to kubuntu 9.10 from 9.04 (not a reformat/fresh install but upgrade over the network) but have it mostly working now, apart from Skype.

The first thing to check is indeed to open up the sound mixer (kmix) and check that the channels 'Master' and 'PCM' are not muted, which they were for me. This helped but I had problems with Skype 2.1.0.47: although I now got the kde startup sound through the laptop speakers, my USB headset didn't appear as a device in Skype - I only had one device available, 'pulseaudio' i.e. the USB headset didn't not appear. What I want to happen is the ringing in the speakers and the mic and headphones for the talking.

Here's what I did:

sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio

...and reverted to using ALSA instead. After I removed pulseaudio I now get a list of audio devices in Skype and can use the USB like I want to, but now the ringing doesn't work through the speakers!

<rant>
Pulseaudio sounds like an interesting idea but I can't get my head around configuring it and I'm not convinced it works properly - it doesn't 'just work' for me and to be honest, I haven't got the patience to find out why. I don't give a monkeys about sound going over the network and sinks and sources - I just want to hear some noise.

Sadly I believe sound is a real weak point in linux. Although I have enjoyed using kubuntu for the last two years and I've been messing about with computers since 1980, I still can't get sound working properly. The basic sound problems were solved 20 years ago in Windows and nothing much has changed since (apart from more channels).
</rant>

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-FW11E laptop, so I'm expecting some problems with the proprietary nature of Sony...but it is frustrating.

I played with the sound mixer setting and suddenly I had system sound.

I have noticed that skype (2.1.0.47) had suddenly changed it's sound ID alsa to pulseaudio. I found that I could not change these setting but unmuting did get it working.

Ekiga is not working at all and I've noticed that "Yannick an ekiga developer seem to warning us about that". I have sent him email since I would like to ekiga 3.2.6 but have heard back yet.

The only reason I moved twice in one day was 9.04 would not connect my epson Stylus CX5400 but the up grade seems to have fixed it, so far.

The system Ubuntu 9.10 32bit has many changes but looks and works very well.

Ubuntu has a new sound icon that appears on the top right of the screen. Often this 'lever' seems to be turned off.

The sound on my Ubuntu system was by far the best of my three computers - XP -Vista. On upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 the sound became the worst with static type background then it disappeared completely. After a couple of days chasing around the web and playing around with my system I found an extra sound driver had been installed during the upgrade, it was now the default driver. I disabled it and returned to my "old" driver Eureka I had my top of the line sound again. I did this using preferences/sound and selecting the hardware tab in the popup menu. What has been a real education is being able to play music cd's I've spent days trying to do so I finally found the Holy Grail in a fashion. I'm now trying to get DVD's to run without any heartburn. I achieved that in a fashion after chasing/downloading codecs and reading forums/web sites with 101 suggestions. I'm a relative beginner from down under.

nwarp,

I am using 9.04 and my friend is using 9.10.
The sound on Skype was working absolutely perfectly until very recently so I suspect that a software update (Skype itself or sound driver?) has messed things up on both of our pcs.

We both get terrible interference on sound when we try the Sound Testing Service.

Have you any idea what the name of your new default sound driver is called and how do I get rid of it?
I then need to select whatever driver was working originally.
Any idea of its name?
If anybody else has any suggestions regarding a recent problematic sound driver/Skype update, I am all ears!

Pulse sound server works for other applications, but Skype remains for me without sound. Skype is in the list of clients, but has no connection. With Skype up and running, there is no stream even when there is an incoming call. Kind of disappointing!
As for 9.10, well, never again will I go for an upgrade like that!! It should not be released on unsuspecting people like that!

Beach Boy

My system motherboard is a G31M-S2L. On updating to Ubuntu 9.10 I found I had no sound. After much searching believing the sound had been muted I went to Preferences/Sound. Under Hardware I found RV610 audio device (Radeon HD 2400 pro)1 output Digital Stereo (HDMI) output had been enabled It had been downloaded during the upgrade. The default is Internal Audio 1 output. I disabled Digital Stereo and enabled the Internal Audio.I went to Settings for the Selected Device at the bottom of the window to find there are numerous selections which can be made. I've selected analogue surround 4.1 output. The sound quality is excellent. Further reading of the motherboard manual I've found it is analogue only and not digital. I'm only a beginner with Ubuntu I hope this makes sense and is of some help.

Regards

nwarp,

Thanks for your reply.
It turns out that the software updates were blameless.

For some bizarre reason in Ubuntu 9.10 the default setting for sound appears to be “Mute”.
Right click on the speaker icon in the top toolbar (next to the date) and remove the tick from “Mute”.
Then select “Preferences” and adjust the sound settings as required, making sure none are muted.
Do not set the volume controls too high otherwise you may get feedback/white noise.

Another tip for Skype users who wish to avoid interference on sound:

Log in to your Skype account > Options > Sound Devices.
Untick the box for “Allow Skype to automatically adjust my mixer levels”.

I strongly suspect the last item was the one which was causing the problems.