Strange audio problems

[Basil Chupin]

On 26/12/12 06:03, Mark Fraser wrote:
> My daughter's been having problems with the audio breaking up on her computer
> for a while, but today I went into PulseAudio Volume Control and noticed that
> the output device port was constantly switching between Analogue Output and
> Headphones. Running alsamixer from the command line also showed this, but with
> the surround channels even though they're not used.
>
> Can anyone offer any advice on how to sort this out?
>
> Thanks.

When asking a question always pays to offer the people some information 
about the "computer", the OS (ie distro and version being run) and 
anything else which *you* would like to know if you were to attempt and 
answer someone's request for help. OK?

The first question I would ask is: is this an occurrence which suddenly 
afflicted your daughter or is this something which is now happening 
because you/she installed (some version) of Kubuntu?

The next question is: is this sound being generated by the motherboard's 
onboard chipset or by a PCI(/E) card? And which of these is 
selected/activated in the BIOS (you cannot have both activated 
[disclaimer here])?

Last question: when using Alsamixer did you use F6 to select the sound 
source/card, and did you get a full list of what channels are available 
for configuration **?

** In many cases, pulseaudio stuffs up alsamixer and alsamixer only 
displays about 3 or 4 available channels; disabling or removing 
puseaudio then enables alsamixer to display all channels.

BC

-- 
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