[SOLVED] Sound stopped working but the problem cleared by itself.

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JayM
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[SOLVED] Sound stopped working but the problem cleared by itself.

#1 Post by JayM »

My sound was working on Monday evening. I did a clean shut-down of MX and the computer before going to bed. Yesterday evening I went to watch some videos on YouTube and had no sound. I found that if I turned off the power switch on my subwoofer speaker system I'd have sound for just a moment when I switched it back on then it would immediately fade out to silence. My PulseAudio mixer indicated that there was sound the entire time a video was playing. I had the same behavior with a movie playing in vlc or smplayer too.

I tried my old set of Creative Labs speakers but had the same results, no sound. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling PulseAudio but that didn't do anything, and I checked my sound levels in alsamixer in a console. Everything was good and nothing was muted. I quadruple-checked all settings in the pulseaudio mixer and checked my BIOS to make sure the onboard sound was enabled but there was no setting for sound in BIOS, just for things like the onboard Ethernet, parallel and serial ports, and onboard video. I reset my BIOS to its default settings just in case: still no sound.

I tried my subwoofer speakers with my radio and had the same behavior, sound for a moment when the speakers were first turned on then fading to silence. However the radio's battery was almost completely discharged, so I charged it for several minutes and then I had sound from the radio with no fading. I rebooted the computer after plugging the speakers in and this time I had sound with no fading and it was working normally.

I wonder if the audio cable from the speakers to the source, the one with the green 3.5mm plug, is intermittently defective and if my old speakers that I replaced with the subwoofer system have also gone bad? Or if my onboard soundcard is starting to fail, which I was convinced was the problem (a failed onboard audio controller) until I tested with the radio? I wonder what happened?

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System:    Host: mx Kernel: 4.9.0-8-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 6.3.0 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 Distro: MX-18.1_x64 Continuum Dec 20  2018 
           base: Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) 
Machine:   Type: Desktop Mobo: ASRock model: A780GM-LE serial: <filter> 
           BIOS: American Megatrends v: P1.50 date: 05/25/2010 
CPU:       Topology: Dual Core model: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ bits: 64 type: MCP arch: K8 rev.F+ 
           rev: 3 L2 cache: 1024 KiB 
           flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 svm bogomips: 10451 
           Speed: 2600 MHz min/max: 1000/2600 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2600 2: 2600 
Graphics:  Device-1: AMD RS780 [Radeon HD 3200] vendor: ASRock driver: radeon v: kernel 
           bus ID: 01:05.0 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.2 driver: ati,radeon unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa 
           resolution: 1366x768~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD RS780 (DRM 2.49.0 / 4.9.0-8-amd64 LLVM 7.0.0) 
           v: 3.3 Mesa 18.2.6 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: AMD SBx00 Azalia vendor: ASRock driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus ID: 00:14.2 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.9.0-8-amd64 
Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet vendor: ASRock 
           driver: r8169 v: 2.3LK-NAPI port: e800 bus ID: 02:00.0 
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 1.36 TiB used: 455.89 GiB (32.6%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Western Digital model: WD5000AAKX-75U6AA0 size: 465.76 GiB 
           ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Seagate model: ST1000DM010-2EP102 size: 931.51 GiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 454.96 GiB used: 25.69 GiB (5.6%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-0 
           ID-2: /boot size: 487.8 MiB used: 183.7 MiB (37.7%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1 
           ID-3: swap-1 size: 2.00 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/dm-1 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 47.0 C mobo: N/A 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:     Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/antix.list 
           1: deb http://la.mxrepo.com/antix/stretch stretch main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ stretch main non-free
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/various.list 
Info:      Processes: 236 Uptime: 3h 53m Memory: 7.55 GiB used: 2.19 GiB (28.9%) Init: SysVinit 
           runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 6.3.0 Shell: bash v: 4.4.12 inxi: 3.0.29 
Last edited by JayM on Wed Nov 18, 2020 8:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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sunrat
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Re: Sound stopped working but the problem cleared by itself.

#2 Post by sunrat »

Those tiny audio plugs are fickle things. I had one set of computer speakers which needed a wiggle on the input plug to work properly. A gentle kick to the subwoofer had the same effect and was more convenient. ;)

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JayM
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Re: Sound stopped working but the problem cleared by itself.

#3 Post by JayM »

And sometimes the plugs and/or jacks get dirty and have to be exercised by shoving the plug in and out to clean them a bit. That may have actually been what the cause was and the fix may have been just plugging in first the other speakers then the subwoofer ones several times during my troubleshooting.

Usually when it's a jack or plug issue I get no sound at all but start getting it when I touch or turn the plug, which didn't happen this time. I wish I could get electronic contact cleaner spray here but I've never found any. The closest there is is either liquid alcohol or WD-40 spray, neither of which would probably be very good for a computer. I haven't even been able to find canned compressed air for dust removal here.
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sunrat
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Re: Sound stopped working but the problem cleared by itself.

#4 Post by sunrat »

Never use WD-40 on electrical/electronic parts! Isopropyl alcohol is ok.

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JayM
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Re: Sound stopped working but the problem cleared by itself.

#5 Post by JayM »

sunrat wrote: Wed Apr 03, 2019 4:20 am Never use WD-40 on electrical/electronic parts! Isopropyl alcohol is ok.
I already know about WD-40 vs. electronics. It's fine on purely mechanical parts such as case hinges on an old radio or something but not on electrical contacts or curcuitry.

The problem with isopropyl alcohol is if you get any on plastic parts it's not good for those, but it's OK for cleaning metal electrical contacts. I think the contact cleaner spray is actually alcohol-based along with an added light lubricant of some sort. (Like the TV tuner cleaner spray that Radio Shack used to sell for old TVs with mechanical channel-changers back in the day.) If you use ispopropyl alcohol from a bottle you're liable to get it all over the place vs. using it from a spray can with one of those small-diameter tubes to project and confine the spray to where you want it.
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Eadwine Rose
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Re: Sound stopped working but the problem cleared by itself.

#6 Post by Eadwine Rose »

I have contact spray for those buggy crackly annoying connectors ;)
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JayM
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Re: Sound stopped working but the problem cleared by itself.

#7 Post by JayM »

It's done it two or three more times. This last time, no amount of exercising the plug and jack, twiddling the ALSA mixer settings or rebooting helped. My particular speakers come with an mp3 player built into the top of the subwoofer with both a USB port and SD card slot, so I formatted a USB pendrive as fat32 and copied a bunch of mp3s onto it to test the speakers themselves. When I plugged that in and hit the Play button on the mp3 thingy, the songs played. Then when I retested the sound in VLC and a web browser (YouTube) that worked again also.

I suspect that the issue was due to a dirty USB port. I get a lot of dust here due to having to burn mosquito coils every night for dengue prevention: they're similar to incense and deposit a very, very fine ash that gets everywhere. (Dunno what I'll do if the SD slot shows the same behavior other than run out and buy a full-sized SD card to exercise the slot's connectors with.)
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JayM
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[SOLVED] Sound stopped working but the problem cleared by itself.

#8 Post by JayM »

I had the problem three or four more times but I solved it. It was a PEBKAC issue (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair) all along. My speaker system comes with a built-in mp3 player on the top of the subwoofer. I'd been setting heavy things on top of that which has been pushing down one of the mp3 player's control buttons. I can reproduce the issue manually by holding down the offending button with my finger.
:bagoverhead: :hitmyhead:
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Eadwine Rose
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Re: Sound stopped working but the problem cleared by itself.

#9 Post by Eadwine Rose »

:laugh:

Glad to hear it is sorted!!

Reminds me of my ex a lonnnng time ago. Sound wasn't working and he started rummaging around in the case looking for a cable that might have come loose and all that.

"Can I look?"

NOPE nooo he was gonna find it.

In the end when he didn't I asked again.. Yeah well.. ok then.

I saw down and saw this volume icon. Muted. All I did was point it out with a blank look on my face and then started hollering.


So yeah.. stuff like that happens :laugh:
MX-23.2_x64 July 31 2023 * 6.1.0-18-amd64 ext4 Xfce 4.18.1 * 8core AMD Ryzen 7 2700
Asus TUF B450-Plus Gaming UEFI * Asus GTX 1050 Ti Nvidia 525.147.05 * 2x16Gb DDR4 2666 Kingston HyperX Predator
Samsung 860EVO * Samsung S24D330 & P2250 * HP Envy 5030

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