Score:0

No sound, probably because of s/pdif

us flag

I'm running kubuntu 20.04 and I get no sound. I looked in alsamixer and found only s/pdif. I suspect that s/pdif is hijacking my sound and diverting it to a nonexisting device. How can I make it go away?

ChanganAuto avatar
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The problem is likely the analog part not being detected - not uncommon - the S/PDIF is just an additional connector that isn't hijacking anything. It should be there if it exists alongside the other outputs/inputs.
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My computer is a perfectly ordinary laptop with nothing attached to it.
ChanganAuto avatar
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/PDIF It's an audio output like any other. The S/PDIF port needs "nothing attached to it" (or connected to) in order to be detected, the same way the analog output that you're missing doesn't need to have something connected to it to be detected and available. My comment was merely to point you in the right direction because your assumption about "hijacking"/"diverting" is nonsensical. You may need to add an ALSA parameter to have the analog part of the integrated sound card properly recognized but otherwise leave the S/PDIF (digital) part alone.
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My problem is that I can't get ordinary sound output. The information shown by alsamixer suggests that somehow ordinary sound output is being misclassified as spdif output. The indication of that is that alsamixer shows spdif and nothing else.
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I found the cause but not the cure. Somehow the default output device has been switched from the xpeaker/headphone to HDMI.. I belevethis is the result of a recent update. Now i have to figure out how to switch it back. The spdif buiness was a huge red herring.
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You need to use pavucontrol to choose the output device, but the dropdown menu that is supposed to give you that choice is not in the version of pavucontrol that I have. It may be different between versions in different repositories.
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I became aware of the problems of pavucontrol and its friends when my sound suddenly stopped working. On further investigation I discovered that all the volume controls in alsamixer had vanished but there was an unfamiliar entry for spdif. I later learned the cause: the output had been switched from speaker to HDMI.
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The situation was enormously confused by recent updates. In one post I read that the output device page has a dropdown list with additional choices, but I haven't seen it. Apparently if you have the right version of oavucontrol (I don't), the output devices page lets you switch between HDMI and speaker.
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