bloggingIT

I’ve found that using the ALSA sound system in Ubuntu is pretty slick, but becomes a pain when the sound tool in Ubuntu doesn’t correctly switch devices using the graphical user interface.

In a nutshell, here are a few useful commands to list and select the sound devices that are on your computer:

asoundconf list - list available sound cards
asoundconf set-default-card # - set the default sound card. Replace # with the device name from the previous command
alsamixer # - adjust volume settings for your specific sound card. Once again, replace # with the device.

Running through these 3 commands will probably save any user a great deal of grief in the long run.

I hear that Microsoft didn’t take one of my BETA bug reports very seriously. Even after updating the drivers through windows update, audio is an issue.

Sound is still stopping on my Analog Devices sound card, with no errors, just an absence of noise.

Since Beta 2, I’ve adopted this method (which seems to be the quickest without writing a command script):

Step 1

Run command prompt with Administrator privlidges

• Click the Start button
• Type cmd
• Right-click on ‘Command Prompt’ and click ‘Run as Administrator’
• Accept the UAC Prompt

Step 2

Restart the Audio Service

• Type net stop audiosrv and press Enter.
• Type net start audiosrv and press Enter.
• Type exit to close the command prompt

Now go and play that CD you wanted to listen to!

Making it automatic

If you are like me and hate typing that in everysingle time, we can create a simple script to do the work for you. Start Notepad and type the first two lines of the above commands into it:

net stop audiosrv net start audiosrv

Save the file as restartaudio.cmd in Desktop.

Now, whenever the audio plays up, right-click on the file, and select Run as Administrator.