Configuring Sound on Linux/Pulse Audio/Troubleshooting

This document entails issues you might encounter with PulseAudio.

Verbose error capturing
Wanto to figure out what PulseAudio is doing? Try the following.

Symptom
If you have the sample frequence set wrong you might encounter an error like this when you startup PulseAudio

Solution
Explicitly set the rate for the PulseAudio module in /etc/pulse/default.pa.

Symptom
You suddenly have no sound afer you wake up your computer or when you plug headphones, but alsamixer show that sound is enabled and volume can be hight.

Solution
Check pacmd command if your sound is not mute: Second sink is mute so we need to unmute it Additionaly restarting pulseaudio may be needed NOTE: If you play video using flash in Browser (like YouTube) you can enable sound but when you exit from pacmd the sound stop and when you try to enter pacmd again to show that pulseaudio is not running in the session, in this case refreshing the page with the video solve the issue.