No Sound

[MikeWalsh]

I keep one of these in my spares box, basic ones are comparatively cheap, mine is similar to this one

MINI JACK PC HEADPHONE MIC TO USB ADAPTER External Sound Card for Laptop Macbook | eBay UK

Upgrade your audio setup with the MINI JACK PC HEADPHONE MIC TO USB ADAPTER and enjoy clear and enhanced sound quality effortlessly. Simply plug the Sound Adapter into your USB port and connect your headphones, mic, or compatible audio device.

www.ebay.co.uk

@noelw :-

.....and they DO work, very well. They mostly have just a headphone output and a microphone input, with a simple slider level control for each.

Like @Brickwizard, I too have had one for years, since before the ancient Dell Inspiron 1100 lappie gave up the ghost 6 years ago. The headphone port was loose on the mobo, and the spring contacts had had so much use they were shot. No use MY trying to "fix" it, 'cos my soldering skills are rubbish.....about like bird droppings. And that's on a good day!

They're useful things to have around.....and they're as cheap as chips. Just select the appropriate sound card to use, and you're off-and-running.

This is mine:-

Amazon.co.uk

Mike.

 

[noelw]

@noelw :-

.....and they DO work, very well. They mostly have just a headphone output and a microphone input, with a simple slider level control for each.

Like @Brickwizard, I too have had one for years, since before the ancient Dell Inspiron 1100 lappie gave up the ghost 6 years ago. The headphone port was loose on the mobo, and the spring contacts had had so much use they were shot. No use MY trying to "fix" it, 'cos my soldering skills are rubbish.....about like bird droppings. And that's on a good day!

They're useful things to have around.....and they're as cheap as chips. Just select the appropriate sound card to use, and you're off-and-running.

This is mine:-

Amazon.co.uk

Mike.

I have just ordered a creative sound blaster usb from ebay. Only 50 smackers. I will have to go with out sound for a week till it gets here. I had to put mint back on . It is much better than macos. Actually way better. I will check back after I have installed it. I got the imac as an impulse purchase. I personally think they are they are great with linux on them.

 

[KGIII]

While all of my systems function properly, I still have a couple of the USB sound cards in my stash. I keep them on-hand in case I need them for something, such as a broken jack. I believe I'm down to just two of them because I gave one away.

 

[rado84]

After I recently bought a C-Media 8738 I had a similar problem and it took me a while to figure it out. The sound is on a basic level where the distro doesn't matter, it's all about the audio driver in the kernel.
First run pulsemixer in terminal, press F3, use the arrows to navigate the GA device with HDMI and select "OFF" for it. Then navigate the other device (Intel's) and choose th source you want - should be something like "Analog Stereo Output" (if you wan't 2.0 or 2.1 source) or choose another profile, if you want more than 2.1.
Then press escape to exit pulsemixer.
After that open alsamixer in terminal, press F6 and select "HDA Intel PCH" - I'm assuming that's the sound card you wanna use. If you wanna use the GA card, you'll need a different cable. Raise to 100% these:

Press escape again to exit alsamixer.
Open the menu and type "pavu" in the searchbox. If you have "PulseAudio Volume control", you'll see it. Run the program, go to the Configuration tab - it should look like this:

You can also click the padlock icons to the right to prevent from the configuration changing back to default after rebooting.
Then open Cinnamon's "Audio settings" and it should look the same.

After that all you gotta do is make sure you've plugged the 3.5" male of the cable into the proper jack which on laptops is usually with the icon of headphones.

And if after all this there's still NO sound, that means there's no specific kernel driver for that sound card, only a generic driver which is basically nothing. I had a similar problem (desktop PC, not laptop) where the generic driver was useless, which is why I had to buy the C-Media. Weird enough, after installing the C-Media into the PCI slot, the stupid generic driver for the integrated Realtek started working properly. But even so, there was still no mic from the Realtek, so I've plugged the mic into the C-Media in order to be able to talk to people on Discord.

 

[noelw]

Well i got the Creative play 3 usb and the sound is terrific. Thanks for the help all.