I am trying to get the audio on my laptop going (Medion akoya, MD96706).

Under Ubuntu 8.04 I eventually did get the headphones to work, but could not get any sound out of the speakers.
After the upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10 I unfortunately lost all sound. Since I want to edit videos (Avidemux, great program), it sure would be nice to get the sound to work.

Using lspci I get "Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)"

In order to find the audio chip data I checked the /proc/asound/cards file, but to my surprise the only line in this file is "--- no soundcards ---".

When trying to test the sound (system/preferences/sound preferences) I get "audiotestsrc wave=sine freq=512 ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink: Could not get/set settings from/on resource."

Does anyone know of an other way to get the audio device installed, other than to do a fresh re installation of Ubuntu 8.10 (upgraded before from 8.04)?

Starting from a live CD I (Ubuntu 8.04) I found the /proc/asound files to be there, and I also straight away had sound through the headphones, so apparently something is wrong loading the alsa files under 8.10.....

FYI:

Upgraded to 9.04, again no sound....

Found the solution in adding the right model for my computer in asound! Next, after manually tweaking the 'master'-sound-control (not by starting the GUI, since it does not work due to an error.., but by editing the setup file) and setting the volume control to -max- everything is perfect!

Can you tell me how exactly you resolved the problem? I am having a similar problem on Ubuntu 9.04. Here is what my lspci and /proc/asound/cards look like:

Thanks!!

lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82P965/G965 Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82P965/G965 PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev f2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HB/HR (ICH8/R) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) 4 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) 2 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G80 [GeForce 8800 GTS] (rev a2)
03:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technologies, Inc. JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI Controller (rev 02)
03:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technologies, Inc. JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI Controller (rev 02)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)

more /proc/asound/cards
]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel
HDA Intel at 0xfa100000 irq 22

Sure, no problem.

After spending a lot of time on internet, once more to try to find a way to finally resolve the problem (had no sound since Ubuntu 8.04...) I found at several places that a special option had to be added to the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf for my computer. I am running Ubuntu on my laptop, a Medion computer, type MD 96706. For my specific computer the option model=medion supposedly had to be added.

So, I opened as root (in a terminal window) the alsa-base.conf file with an editor,
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
and added at the very end the line
options snd-hda-intel model=medion

After saving the file and rebooting, I then was very surprised when I did hear some sound; not very loud, and no headphones, but very hopeful! So what you could try is to add the line as mentioned, filling in your computer type instead of my medion (like model=acer).

I then found that I should use the 'Codec' in my struggle to find an answer to my problem; to do this, I used (in the command terminal) to find the Codec of my machine
cat /proc/asound/card0/codec#* | grep Codec
and got as reply
Codec = Realtek ALC 883
Codec = Realtek ALC 268
Next, searching for Realtek ALC 883, I then found (only mentioned on one site though) that instead of adding medion as model, I should add model=ALC883_MEDION. So I repeated the above described edit of alsa-base.conf, and added the newly found phrase instead of (!) model=medion. Saved the file, and rebooted.

This worked out great - I now also had my headphones going on full strength, but speakers volume was still very weak though.

Ok, now it seems that there is a master volume control for the speakers, only to be controlled by starting the alsamixer (can be done again from the terminal window, using alsamixer or amixer). In my case however it does not run, and returns the error "(MIXER,'Headphone Playback Switch',0,2,0) appears twice or more". Great.... But, apparently, the settings for this volume control can be found in /var/lib/alsa/asound.state. I found the next procedure to manually edit this file:

sudo alsactl store
sudo gedit /var/lib/alsa/asound.state

Look under the "control 1" section for the volume setting: in my case the volume range was listed as 0-31, but the actual settings were only 17 (value.0 and value.1)! So changed the value.0 and value.1 settings both to 31. Save and quit. Then

sudo alsactl -F -f /var/lib/alsa/asound.state restore

Again restarted the computer, and all is running great. To be honest, the editing of the file I understand, the first and last commands not - I figured that editing and restarting the computer would just be fine, but executed the whole procedure anyway.

Hope this will work for you to, success!