Hello All,

I'm having a lot of sound problems lately. I've read several forums on similar issues, but I can't seem to solve it. Here is all the important information I can think of:
Computer: Lenovo ThinkPad 11E
Distro: Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia
DE: XFCE
Installed: pavucontrol, pulseaudio, xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin
Problems:
- Volume control keys do not work
- Pulseaudio plugin seems to freeze up/not respond when I click on the icon in the panel
- Pulseaudio plugin seems to load very slowly (when I login, everything else in the panel will load, but it will take awhile for the pulseaudio icon to show up)
What I've Tried:
- Deleting and reinstalling xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin, pulseaudio, pavucontrol
- Deleting xfce4-volumed (did not reinstall)
- I've made sure that the "Enable keyboard shortcuts for volume control" option is checked in the pulseaudio-plugin settings
- I noticed that in my keyboard settings, my volume control keys were not mapped. I tried mapping them, but that didn't seem to fix anything.
Notes:
- I recently installed the Plasma DE, but I decided I wanted to stick with XFCE, so I deleted Plasma. I don't know if that would affect the sound.
- My end goal is to be able to use the volume keys to control the volume. Preferably, I would like there to be some sort of graphical indication that this is working ie. volume bar moves up and down

I'm new to linux, and I've loved how much of a learning opportunity its been. That being said, I think I've exhausted the scope of my knowledge trying to fix this; I don't know that much about computers in general. I'd really appreciate any help!

Thanks!
-PB4P

did your sound problems start after installing plasma?

Hey, thanks for replying; sorry it took me a while to see it! It did seem like the problems started after I installed plasma. The sound worked fine when I was using plasma, but it didn't seem to work when I would switch back to xfce. Now that Mint 20 is out, I was thinking of just doing a clean reinstall anyways and seeing if that works.

1 members found this post helpful.

a clean install of 20 sounds like a good way to get things back in order. i read a few older posts saying that installing an additional desktop environment could possibly cause issues like yours. creating a timeshift snapshot might give you something to roll back to if you try that in the future.