sound issue
 

On Linux Mint 17.1 the sound works fine on both speakers. I was trying to get the sound to work on the 6 USB ports available and the speaker jack. I went into the sound settings and all that is listed is the computer speakers. How do I add the USB and sound jack ports to the sound options?

What speakers are you talking about that Linux Mint works on? Is this a laptop? Are you talking about the built-in laptop speakers? If so, Holy Moly, what laptop has 6 USB ports? To get speakers to show up in the other ports, first you need to connect speakers to USB port or headphone jack.

HP 2740P Laptop. Both speakers on the laptop work fine. The one USB port and speaker jack on the laptop will not recognize the head set plugged into the USB port or the TV plugged into the speaker jack. The base I attach the laptop to has 5 USB ports. I have plugged the head set into each of the 5 USB ports, recognized by none. When I go into the sound options the only option is the computer speakers. I want to know how to add the sound jack and the USB ports as options for the sound.

Sound problems can be infuriating! Some options:

Look in the controls for your media player and see if you can set its output channel. That's a crude solution, but at least it's a quick fix.

See if you have pavucontrol available - it's launched from the command line - and if you haven't, get it. It should enable you to set output.

If that fails, then use the command
aplay -l
With everything plugged in. It should list things like
card 0: Device [C-Media CMI8738], device 0: CMI8738-MC6 [C-Media PCI DAC/ADC]
card 1: Device [USB Audio Device], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
The internal sound and the speaker jack may use the same device or not: sometimes the video card may be used for sound. The usb device, when plugged in, should definitely be listed. If you don't get the usb device listed, see if the driver is there with
cat /proc/asound/modules
If you don't get snd_usb_audio in the output, it's missing and need to be installed with the package manager.

If necessary come back to us with the output of aplay.