No sound from Chrome, sound works fine in Firefox etc (13.10)

Question

I'm running 13.10 (all up-to-date) on a Lenovo laptop with a Griffin iMic USB audio device. Though I occasionally have to use the Pulse Audio volume control tool to re-select the iMic, it works consistently from everything on the system except Chrome, which basically has no audio at all.

With most applications that want to use the audio stuff, you see something in the first tab of pavucontrol. Not Chrome; there's just nothing.

Some ancient forum posts here and there suggested symlinking the Firefox "plugins" directory over to Chrome's installation directory, which seems pretty goofy and which doesn't work now anyway.

Chrome version is 34.0.1847.132.

Is there some trick to making Chrome work with a USB audio device? (As far as I can tell it doesn't work with built-in audio either ...)

edit — Still not working, now on 14.04 and Chrome 37.0.2062.120

More info:

Chrome's been reinstalled more than once, with no effect. I've also tried the beta (currently Chrome 38.0.2125.77 beta). The PulseAudio manager tool, in its list of clients, shows Firefox and various other things, and also "Chrome input" but no "Chrome output".

Chromium behaves exactly the same way.

edit — now on an (old and tired) 15.04 installation. Chrome (Version 49.0.2623.112 (64-bit)) still does not work, though on full moon nights or something else random it'll send sound through the built-in analog audio on the laptop. However, Chromium (Version 48.0.2564.82 Ubuntu 15.04 (64-bit)) does work now, and it works through the USB audio device. I don't know of any particular thing I've done lately to make that true, but

Solution 1

I had the same problem. It ended up being that my system was trying to put Chrome's sound through the HDMI even though the HDMI chord was not plugged in at the time. Presumably, this could happen with any audio output device. The sound settings Ubuntu offers didn't show this nor let me change it for the individual application, but pavucontrol did.

To install pavucontrol from the Terminal:

sudo apt-get install pavucontrol

To open pavucontrol from the Terminal:

pavucontrol

Select the "Playback" menu and make sure that you have it set to Show Applications. Now, start playing something from Google Chrome. It will show up there, and it will show what output device is being used for Google Chrome. Make sure it is set to the output device you are trying to use.

Solution 2

This work for me (Ubuntu 14.04):

killall pulseaudio
rm -r ~/.config/pulse/*
rm -r ~/.pulse*

And reboot.

These commands will stop pulseaudio and remove its current configuration, to start with the defaults again.

Solution 3

Before wiping out the entire Chrome configuration directory, try this: switch to another audio output device and then switch back to the original one. If you have only one audio device, connect an external one (like HDMI or USB audio) and then perform the above trick.

Update The following seems to prevent the problem from reappearing in the future:

• Edit /etc/pulse/default.pa, find the line that starts with load-module module-stream-restore and add restore_device=false at the end so that the line looks like this:

  load-module module-stream-restore restore_device=false

• Do killall pulseaudio

Solution 4

None of the above worked form, been without sound in chrome for a week. Then I started SMplayer, no sound also, Options>Pregerences>Audio switched from pulseaudio to alsa.

Next time I started chrome sound works.

Solution 5

I had a similar problem. My laptop had two sound cards, one for built-in audio from the laptop speakers, the other to come through the hdmi output. When I was playing music or something that used the browsers sound, it was channeling the sound through the hdmi channel. From the kmix sound manager, I could see that chrome was listed in the playback streams but if you right clicked on the chrome icon and select move, there was an option to change the audio output for the stream. I made sure it wasn't hdmi, since I wanted the sound to come from my speakers or headphones.

View more solutions

Comments

[s3lph]

Is Chrome muted in the sound settings?

[JasonWoof]

@the_Seppi no, it isn't, as far as I know. I'm running xfce4 as my desktop; I don't even know where such a settings panel (or config file) might be.

[s3lph]

Execute (and install, if not found) xfce4-mixer from a terminal.

[JasonWoof]

@the_Seppi well that gives me volume control etc, but it has no effect on Chrome. (Thanks for the suggestion however.)

[s3lph]

Does it only apply to Flash or also everything else? w3schools.com/html/html5_video.asp Watch this video. If you hear anything, it's a Flash problem. If not, it's really Chrome-related.

[JasonWoof]

@the_Seppi works fine in Firefox, not at all in Chrome. Youtube and Vimeo work in Firefox, not in Chrome. Amazon music previews work in Firefox, not in Chrome. Using a freshly-created test user with Chrome (so, no saved config) doesn't work either. I'm of the opinion that it's a Chrome issue :)

[s3lph]

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

[Isiah Meadows]

Check if this is a known bug with Chrome/Chromium, and if there doesn't already exist a bug, feel free to file a new one. Note that this is not a bug with Ubuntu or any other program or driver.

[laugeo]

did you try to reset chrome config: copy and run this command in a terminal :mv ~/.config/google-chrome ~/.config/google-chrome_bak

[JasonWoof]

@impinball I agree - I've managed to get all sorts of audio stuff working on this machine (in fact playing with SuperCollider and Overtone today) but the only thing consistently broken is Chrome (and Chromium).

[JasonWoof]

@laugeo yes I did, but thanks for the suggestion.

[Panther]

did you look at this - askubuntu.com/questions/284202/chromium-doesnt-play-sound

[JasonWoof]

@bodhi.zazen yes, no luck. Thanks for the suggestion however.

[Panther]

If that did not resolve the problem then, IMO you are should file a bug report with chrome as Ubuntu seems to be working and chrome is not in the Ubuntu repositories.

[Zeiss Ikon]

Even 15.04 is long past EOL -- you should at least update to 16.04 to see if the problem resolves.

[JasonWoof]

@ZeissIkon this question was from 4 years ago :)

[Zeiss Ikon]

Huh. It showed up as "modified X minutes ago" right before I commented...

[JasonWoof]

Thanks, but as far as I know modern versions of Chrome don't support the old Netscape plugin API any more. I have flashplugin-installer installed on my system, but with Chrome the only Flash option available is PepperFlash.

[ttoine]

You are right, since Ubuntu 14.04, Chrome and Chromium can not use anymore the Netscape plugin API. Maybe you should follow this tutorial ? itsfoss.com/fix-flash-player-issue-chromium-in-ubuntu-14-04. However, my answer should be good for Ubuntu 12.04

[JasonWoof]

I've got Pepper Flash installed and updated already, thanks.

[ttoine]

you tell you re-installed Chrome many times. But did you delete the .config/google-chrome folder in your /home ?

[JasonWoof]

Yes, I have tried Chrome with freshly-made user accounts and after removing my own .config directory. This problem has been going on for almost a year, so I've had plenty of time to experiment :)

[ttoine]

do you have sound with the integrated sound card of the laptop ?

[JasonWoof]

I do from all other software, but not Chrome.

[ttoine]

the Griffin iMic USB audio is the integrated sound device ??

[JasonWoof]

actually sometimes I do have sound from the integrated device. I happened to be using chrome the other day and was stunned to hear audio coming from the laptop.

[JasonWoof]

Thanks for your suggestion. I'll give it a try at some point.

[Tony]

Worked for me too on Ubuntu 12.04. Had to restart Chrome after the operation.

[axel22]

Worked for me perfectly.

[Kalamalka Kid]

Could you please describe in your answer what these commands actually do?

[Yi Jiang]

Thank you so much for this! I suspected this to be the issue after sound from half my apps disappeared after I had connected then disconnected the laptop to a screen via HDMI, but the default Unity control center doesn't show which outlet the sound was going out from on a per application basis.

[pagliuca]

Worked for me too on Debian 8. Great.

[Zaz]

Repeat these steps for microphone input if you're also having issues with that. A good site to test on is onlinemictest.com

[fgblomqvist]

Worked for me on Ubuntu 18.04.

[jerome]

Perfect, this way I didn't have to kill pulseaudio or remove pulseaudio configs. pavucontrol still seems to work fine under 18 LTS as well.

[Waqleh]

I was trying to output sound from USB (dock-station) and this solved it for me on Kubuntu 18.04

[Robin Hood]

I would just like to say thank you so much because pavucontrol worked for me :D It seems the sound controls failed to default back to "Built-in Audio" after using HDMI.

[Edson Medina]

Switching to a different audio output and back solved it for me. Thanks!

[Wong Jia Hau]

It work for me in Ubuntu 16.04 as well, I just ran the command and restart my chrome and it works!

[Tri Nguyen]

Thanks a lot, not all heroes wear capes nowadays

[Gabriel Amazonas Mesquita]

Thank you so much. This works for me on Ubuntu 16.04

[dgo.a]

Thanks. Your solution worked for me. I'm running Linux 5.1.19_1 (Void Linux)

[Victor Ferreira]

things only Linux could provide

[Richard Logwood]

Tried this on Ubuntu 19.10 without success until I switched to another audio input and then back as described below. So it's hard to know if both things were required or only switching the audio input back and forth.

[Richard Logwood]

Switching also worked for me, but I also did the configuration removal of ~/.config/pulse as described above, however, that didn't work until I switched the audio input to something else and back. I did not change /etc/pulse/default.pa

[Vultan]

Thank you!!! This worked for me on Ubuntu 20.04 for a slightly different problem; I lost all sound on my Thinkpad when docked.

[Kef]

Thank you, finally fixed it. 20.04 LTS, almost a decade later and the issue still persists, this is insanity.