Gfilui

How do I reinstall the audio subsystem, or whatever it's called these days?

Running kubuntu 17.10 on an 2017-model i7 Intel NUC. The thing was running fine, even outputting audio through the monitor's speaker, until it no longer was. I cannot figure out what it was that I did that killed the audio, whether it was some apt upgrade or whether it was installing something else, but I have not been able to bring it back, and I really do not want to reinstall the entire workstation. Yes, I have backups, but it will still be annoying.

It's not a permissions issue; /dev/snd/* are all 660 and I'm in the right group (audio). Here is the output of lspci, aplay, and arecord. Everything seems good, yet no devices appear in the Multimedia tab of Settings, nor will vlc or any other audio or video player play any sound.

# lspci -v
00:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation Device 9d71 (rev 21)
 Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 2068
 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 32, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 142
 Region 0: Memory at dc340000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
 Region 4: Memory at dc320000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
 Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3
 Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=55mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot+,D3cold+)
 Status: D0 NoSoftRst+ PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
 Capabilities: [60] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
 Address: 00000000fee004d8 Data: 0000
 Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
 Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel, snd_soc_skl


$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC283 Analog [ALC283 Analog]
 Subdevices: 0/1
 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
 Subdevices: 1/1
 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
 Subdevices: 1/1
 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
 Subdevices: 1/1
 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 9: HDMI 3 [HDMI 3]
 Subdevices: 1/1
 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 10: HDMI 4 [HDMI 4]
 Subdevices: 1/1
 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0


$ arecord -l | sed -e 's/^/ /'
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC283 Analog [ALC283 Analog]
 Subdevices: 1/1
 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

The output of alsa-info is huge, but I can post it if someone thinks it would help with the debugging

Do you have any other programs running that use sound? I have one program that "steals" all of the audio subsytem and no other programs can play sound until I close that one program.

Almost all programs use sounds so think carefully about what else is running, especially background things.