Updated 19/04/2014 : One of the common issues facing Ubuntu users after installing or upgrading Ubuntu is the no sound problem, there are many reason for this issue, sometime is related to a volume setting configuration, misconfiguration or can be that you have a new hardware that is not supported. In this post will try to list some solutions to no-sound issue on Ubuntu.

The following solution should work on Ubuntu 14.04, 13.10, 13.04 Raring Ringtail, 12.10 and any older release of Ubuntu.

1. Check the volume

First thing you need to check is the volume settings, Go to top menu and click sound settings (see screenshot bellow):

Check output volume if muted or not, if not muted then go further with the steps bellow, if is muted then is your problem should be resolved just you have to uncheck mute.

2. Check Alsa Mixer

PulseAudio controls underlying ALSA-level volume controls. To change the ALSA-level volume controls directly, you can do the following:

Open a terminal. (The quickest way is the Ctrl-Alt-T shortcut)

Enter “alsamixer” and press the Enter key.

You will now see a user interface like below.

In this user interface, you can do the following:

Select your correct sound card using F6 and select F5 to see recording controls as well Move around with left and right arrow keys. Increase and decrease volume with up and down arrow keys. Mute/Unmute with the “M” key. An “MM” means muted, and “OO” means unmuted. Exit from alsamixer with the Esc key.

A caveat here: When you mute or unmute something, pulseaudio might pick it up and mute and unmute other controls, as well as PulseAudio’s main mute.

3. Reinstall Alsa and Pulse Audio

Try to reinstall pulse audio and Alsa, open terminal and enter the following commands:

Purge Alsa and Pulse audio using the command:

sudo apt-get remove --purge alsa-base pulseaudio

Now install again Alsa and Pulse Audio:

sudo apt-get install alsa-base pulseaudio

Then, reload Alsa:

sudo alsa force-reload

Done. Check now the sound if it is working, if not, try step 4.

4. Install Ubuntu Audio Development Team Driver

Note: This PPA is not updated to 14.04 yet.

Upgrading your sound drivers may fix the nosound issue, you will need to make sure to uninstall the previous override before trying a new one.

Open terminal and enter the following PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

All done. Cheers!

Via Ubuntu Wiki