Posted on Nov 4, 2008

Fixing flash sound in Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex

After an upgrade I had no sound in any flash movies. I had installed flashplugin-nonfree and screwed around with my sound settings, but no dice. Here’s what I finally did to fix it:

sudo killall pulseaudio

sudo alsa force-reload

Open System -> Preferences -> Sound and set everything to ALSA.

Open Volume Control preferences and set the volume for all the channels accordingly.

What a pain in the arse!

UPDATE:

Like others have said, since this doesn’t persist after a logout/reboot, I still have to reload alsa (but no longer kill pulseaudio) on each login. Bummer.

14 Comments

  • Tony says:

    Thanks man, after searching all over the web and installing and reinstalling flash 10 and 9, I came to your site and it fixed my problem.

  • Tony says:

    hmmm i’ll take that back… now i get no sound when i play my mp3′s. then i logged out and get no sound on flash or playing music….

  • Bryan says:

    Bummer, I didn’t try logging out and logging back in. I’m guessing that pulseaudio needs to be disabled on login. I’ll try and look it up.

  • Bryan says:

    Tony, from the pulseaudio ubuntu wiki page (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio):

    “If you decide you no longer like PulseAudio and would like to disable it: Remove the added lines to /etc/asound.conf If /etc/asound.conf did not exist when you installed PulseAudio, you may remove /etc/asound.conf entirely.

    After this, you may remove all of the installed PulseAudio packages.

    To disable pulseaudio in hardy you need to select alsa for for all options in /system/preferences/sound”

    I had removed my asound.conf file in an earlier attempt at fixing this. I’m thinking if you do the same, it may fix the issue.

  • Tony says:

    thanks bryan…. removing pulseAudio did the trick… hey I went to IIT too, but I didn’t graduate from there…. awesome school.

  • Hooray! This fixed my flash sound. Thanks!

  • Bryan says:

    Glad it helped Steve

  • Jose Lizana says:

    gracias, por fin escucho musica en grooveshark y escucho los videos de youtube, además de mi coleccion de mp3.

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  • Levi says:

    Dude your awesome.

  • Bryan says:

    Thanks Levi, I’ve got my moments

  • Ángela says:

    tengo el Firefox+Windows XP… como puedo solucionar los problemas con el audio?
    muchas gracias

  • dgo77 says:

    Thanks! finally something that worked. I was tired of using opera to watch youtube vids.

  • Martin says:

    sitting on an Ubuntu 8.10 live CD, firefox 3.0.3 (like that notorious Polish RAF squadron). when i restart, i have to install flash again. takes a few tries. then it plays for a bit, then the sound just stops. goes on vacay, one way ticket to CR. somewhere between killing pulseaudio, force-reloading alsa, setting all the sound settings to alsa, restarting firefox, and with a few volume control application quits… IT’S AAAAAAAALLLLLLIIIIIIIVEEEEEEEE…!!!!!!!1!1!!11e1even!!1!

    thanks. now i can listen to KCRW and CBC in the kitchen again, w00t!