Muting sound in Wheezy XFCE --- cannot un-mute

[reiscw]

I am running Debian Wheezy amd64 with the XFCE desktop on a Lenovo G500. My sound hardware is:
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)

After successfully muting the sound with the XFCE Mixer panel applet, if I try to unmute the sound, it does not come back; the panel, however, indicates that the sound has been un-muted. The same behavior results from the built-in keyboard muting (fn-F1 successfully mutes, pressing fn-F1 again indicates that the sound should be back, but it is not). I have to run "sudo alsactl init" in a terminal, and then sound returns immediately (regardless of how I muted the sound).

I should note that on a fresh install I have to run sudo alsactl init once to get the sound working in the first place.

I realize that log files may be appropriate here, but I am not sure which ones should be attached. I am happy to comply with any requests for additional information. This is the only thing I haven't been able to figure out on my own.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[Lou]

Hi, i don't use xfce, but in others wms, after muting the sound, you have to increase the sound(keybindings), and in a couple of seconds it comes back.

check the sound with

Code: Select all

$ alsamixer


PS: i think the reason i never liked xfce was the lack of keybindings.

[reiscw]

Thanks for your suggestion.

When I start alsamixer, I see the volume control go up and down when I adjust the volume with either the panel applet or the fn+F2 / fn+F3 keyboard shortcuts. If I mute the sound, where it says "00" under the volume bar, it becomes "MM". When I try to un-mute the sound, it stays "MM". If I execute "sudo alsactl init" from another terminal, the MM turns back to "00".

[Lou]

Check this from the howto section in this forum, it's very thorough.
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=53708

[reiscw]

I found a partial fix to this. When I click on the Mixer panel applet, I changed the sound card from "HDA Intel PCH (Alsa Mixer)" to "Playback: Built-In Audio Analog Stereo (PulseAudio Mixer)". The keyboard muting key still produces the same error, but now I can mute sound using the panel applet without having to execute "sudo alsactl init".

Thanks for the assistance.

[Robsteady]

I know this may be a couple days late but I found a nice quick explanation for the problem and fix from this site...

http://ronlut.blogspot.com/2014/05/fix-unmuting-pulseaudio-on-xfce.html

[eor2004]

Unfortunately, the fix in the article didn't worked out for me, but I have found a better solution, I have installed "PavuControl" the Pulse Audio Volume Control, then I added a PavuControl icon to the panel as you can see in the picture, when the system doesn't want to unmute, I just click on the PavuControl icon on the panel, go to "Output Devices" tab, and click the Speaker icon that says "Mute Audio" when you hover the mouse on it, and that's it, your speakers will be unmuted again without too much effort on your part, tell me if this works for you and let others having same issue know!

[Red Baron]

The problem is known to affect xfce4-mixer, PavuControl and so on. I think that it's a bug running much deeper. For some reason when unmuting the sound it only unmutes things like headphones, PCM etc. but not the speakers. I don't know how pavucontrol or xfce4-mixer work under the hood but they have obviously something in common related to the user input since this issue is present in both. I will soon upgrade to Debian 8 again with XFCE and hope that this issue has been resolved (I guess asking for keyboard layout applet not being utter garbage is too much LOL). I have been experiencing this ever since I installed Debian 7 and every time I have to manually unmute my speakers, which is incredible user interaction I must say. XD

[hubert.pineault]

I had the same problem with jessie. Using alsamixer, I found out that the channel "speacker" and "headset" were muted and had to be unmuted mannually.

Actually, I found the bug on Ubuntu launchpad that exactly describe what was going on:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-volumed/+bug/1254884

Changing the sound cas to "Playback: internal audio ..." solved the problem.

[toshayx]

Same problem, solved opening the audio mixer, then select playback internal audio and found that is muted. After umute this you will be able to hear music again