To have sound out of my (2) speakers I have to have the Systems Settings --> Sounds --> Output --> Speakers Built-in Audio selection on Analog Surround 4.0 Output but then it's only the Rear speakers that get any sound out of the speakers... The Front speakers when clicked are silent. I don't have surround sound speakers. I do have the speaker cable plugged into the correct audio output jack and they are powered on.

Any way to have this working correctly? I think having this taken care of might fix another, possibly related, issue I'm having.

Thank you,
Ed

I'm not familiar with Mate
Is there a drop down menu allowing to select Analog Stereo Duplex?

EDIT: My desktop with an old high end sound card used Analog Stereo Output/Analog mono input. I guess it would be best if you give some information regarding the hardware and sound device being used.

Since the output jack can only handle 2 channels (3-wire, 2-channel + ground), unless you have surround-sound speakers, you're only going to get 2 channels (2 speakers).

Sorry... Here's the info: I have Cinnamon 18.3, HP Pavilion p6 computer, and the sound card is built-in on the mother board.
hwinfi --short returns "sound: AMD FCH Azalia Controller"

There is no Analog Stereo Duplex choice. The choices in the drop down menu are:
Analog Surround 2.1 Output
Analog Surround 4.0 Output
Analog Surround 4.1 Output
Analog Surround 5.0 Output
Analog Surround 5.1 Output
Analog Surround 7.1 Output
Analog Stereo Output

Only Analog Surround 4.0 Output works and only it's "Rear" speakers result in sound when clicked.

When I select Analog Stereo Output it only has the front speakers showing and they remain silent when clicked.

Thanks,
Ed

According to HP website for HP Pavilion p6-2310 and HP Pavilion p6-2100, they both have integrated HD 5.1 surround sound.

EDIT: Read AwesomMachine's post a few times if needed. If you plug in a 5.1 surround set of speakers, the fronts will work.

I realize that. That's a contributing factor as to why I am looking to have this issue corrected. I am plugged into the motherboard's audio out jack with the 1/8" stereo plug on my powered stereo speaker's cord and yet LM Cinnamon seems to detect this as a surround sound stereo four channel setup with no choice for me to use the simpler two channel stereo connection since it also apparently has determined that the audio out (front speakers) jack circuit is for rear speakers. Hence my front speakers are seen as rear speakers and do not sound off when clicked in the Analog Stereo Output Test Sound window.

Ed

Yes it does... but the speakers still operate as I have described. Mint determining the front speakers to be rear speakers, not front, and that is the issue I'm trying to resolve.

Thanks,
Ed

Quite frankly, does it matter?
You have 2 channel speakers, the OS is giving sound through 2 channels. Who's to say they are front or back when there are only one set and only one line out port. If you had 4.1 or 5.1 speaker sets and they were reversed, that indeed would be cause to be concerned. But if you are getting good sound and the left channel comes out of the left speaker, right channel coming out of right speaker, I don't hear a problem, actually, I don't hear anything from here but you get the point.

Unless the other issue you have not mentioned leads you to be concerned.

$ alsamixer

Sometimes you have settings that change the mode of the soundcard. Which might ONLY be available in alsamixer.

$ cat /proc/asound/cards

And you might have multiple sound devices so the one you want to use is not default (index == 0).

$ alsamixer -c 1

And test that it works.

$ speaker-test -c 2 -l 1 -D hw:1

With -D pulse and other options depending on your sound setup. Your front speakers might be special and tied into HDMI audio at which point you might need to use something like -D hw:1,3 to have that be the output device. Audio gets complex these days since you likely have more than one audio device. Motherboard, video card, webcam, ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

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Shadow 7, Thank you for the very informative terminal commands. More for my 'toolbox' and I've saved your post for future use. I had mixed results. The computer's speakers used by the on-board sound card (HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic) are silent while the second sound card (USB-Audio - USB Audio CODEC) contained in my Ham Radio transceiver did sound. That seems to confirm that the computer does not see any front speakers in it's sound card.

In the Terminal:
ed@ed-den ~ $ cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [Generic ]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
HD-Audio Generic at 0xfef40000 irq 16
1 [CODEC ]: USB-Audio - USB Audio CODEC
Burr-Brown from TI USB Audio CODEC at usb-0000:00:12.2-1.1, full speed

... And...

ed@ed-den ~ $ speaker-test -c 2 -l 1 -D hw:0

speaker-test 1.1.0

Playback device is hw:0
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 64 to 16384
Period size range from 32 to 8192
Using max buffer size 16384
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 4096
was set buffer_size = 16384
0 - Front Left
1 - Front Right
Time per period = 5.632495

BTW... I do not have surround sound speakers so I plugged my speakers into the green "Spkr Out" jack. This resulted in front speaker sound when this was a windows machine so it's strange to me they're seen now as rear speakers. Oh well... no matter... I have all but two of my radio applications running correctly now. As I learn Linux I'm sure that I will eventually have those two running properly too.

This issue isn't solved but you have given me good tools to use while I continue to investigate. Thank you very much for your help,
Ed

I think I get what you're saying about 'only the rear speakers work'. On the graphic to test the speakers, when you click on the rear speakers you get a tone. But when you click on the front speakers there is no tone.

Surround sound is an encoding scheme. Unless the speaker system is properly multiplexed, it doesn't work. Do you actually have 4 speakers connected?

As far as the other issue, in the other post, you should just your sound to analog stereo.

That's right.

No... Just two speakers that are plugged into the green speaker "out" jack.

I sure wish I could, but on the graphic to test the speakers, choosing Analog Stereo Output does not produce a voice. Only selecting Analog Surround 4.0 Output results in a female voice declaring "Rear Right" or "Rear Right".

The stereo speakers I have plugged in are the same I used and plugged into the same speaker Out jack as when this was a windows box only then they were identified and used as front speakers. It's been many years since I had a computer with a two channel sound card and that might have been the NCR computer I bought around 1980.

Where is this "graphic" to test the speakers?

pavucontrol?

There's various .asoundrc configurations to "map" speakers. But you should be able to set the speakers to "stereo" and only have left and right channels. In the case of multiple audio jacks, it might NOT be the green one that is "front" left and right out. By default speaker test loops, so you could leave it running and try the "other" outputs.

$ speaker-test -c 2

With control+"C" to kill it, or other killall / kill -9 type routes. Some soundcards also have extra options, like the aforementioned HDMI audio, which tends to be something like hw:0,3. But for video cards with multiple HDMI outputs it could be hw:0,3 or hw:0,5 or hw:0,7 and so on.... Various information in /proc/asound/* to detail the particulars.

$ cat /proc/asound/card0/pcm3p/info

To see the HDMI output for my current machine. Where card0 is the 0 in hw:0,3, and pcm3p is the 3 in hw:0,3. More clearly stated in the text of said file "card: 0 / device: 3 / name: HDMI / ...". There's a short way of creating a .asoundrc to default to that when NOT using pulseaudio.

FILE: $HOME/.asoundrc
Where ctl is the mixer like controls, and pcm is the audio designation. Otherwise parameters like -D hw:0,3 overrides the default (hw:0,0), but is application specific in a lot of cases. You might also have driver issues, the snd-hda-intel covers a large variety of hardware and sometimes you need to pass parameters to it to get your hardware to play nice (options line in /etc/modprobe.d/ type .conf files, or more manual modprobe routes). Normally only an issue with NEW hardware, which sort of self corrects as linux advances and your hardware becomes more vintage.

$ sudo modinfo snd-hda-intel

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That had me wondering too so I went to System Settings-->Sound and under Device: Speakers Built-in Audio, is the [Test Sound] button which took me to the graphic Awesome Machine referred to.

You've given me a lot to consider and learn to use. At this time most everything is over my head so it will take some time to assimilate it all. I hope to find a good reference manual to make the process a bit easier.

The computers I've owned have the audio jack's color codes are green=out, red=mic, blue=in,and the green is also marked with arrows pointing in or out, and this one also has the jack marked "out". I thought this was standard color code.

When I moved the speaker's cable to the jack marked "side" and then select Analog Stereo Output then my speakers do test as front speakers and the voice is heard accordingly. While I do find it odd that I must use "side" speaker jacks to have them seen as "front" speakers I will use them and will mark this thread as "solved" and move on to other things.

Thank you and Awesome Machine for your help.