No sound on USB headset. How to manage soundcards and audio devices?

Managing soundcards and audio devices

USB and Bluetooth audio devices are individual sound cards, which means that connecting a Bluetooth headset doesn't work like connecting a headset via 3.5mm audio jack, where jack sensing assumes that you want to play audio through the recently connected headset instead of the laptop speakers.

Therefore when adding new audio devices like Bluetooth or USB headsets and speakers as well es new soundcards or audio interfaces, you should check your configuration to make sure that the sound is played by the device you intend to use. The easiest way is via the Sound Indicator in Unity or via System Settings > Sound:

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If your new connected device is the Sennheiser BTD 500 USB in this example, then you should check that it is selected in the Play sound through list.

Alternatively you can use PulseAudio Volume Control to manage your sound cards. It provides many more options such as routing only certain streams (sound from applications) to certain devices. Some applications such as VLC (via package vlc-plugin-pulse) also offer to choose the audio device independently.

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Related topics and questions

  • For KDE and Kubuntu, take a look at Phonon.
  • Question: Is there any Sound enhancers/equalizer?
  • Question: How to play music, coming from the microphone jack?
  • Question: How to play audio from different applications on different output devices?
  • For further troubleshooting see the Debugging Sound Problems guide.

This seems to have fixed it for me, http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1813750&p=11096695#post11096695

Determine your sound device order: Code: cat /proc/asound/cards Dell laptop with Logitech USB headset plugged in: 

rj@lubuntu:~$ cat /proc/asound/cards  
0 [Intel          ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel HDA Intel at 0xdfebc000 irq 21  
1 [Headset        ]: USB-Audio - Logitech USB Headset 
                     Logitech Logitech USB Headset at usb-0000:00:1d.2-1, full speed


sudo leafpad /etc/asound.conf

Set sound device 1 USB Headset as default: 

defaults.ctl.card 1
defaults.pcm.card 1

File/Save/Quit Reboot

If you use both soundcard/speakers and USB headset: UDEV rule switch's default sound device when USB headsets are plugged in. Software producing sound must be restarted after USB is inserted/removed. 

sudo leafpad /etc/udev/rules.d/00-local.rules 

KERNEL=="pcmC[D0-9cp]*", ACTION=="add", PROGRAM="/bin/sh -c 'K=%k;K=$${K#pcmC}; K=$${K%%D*}; echo defaults.ctl.card $$K > /etc/asound.conf; echo defaults.pcm.card $$K >>/etc/asound.conf'"
KERNEL=="pcmC[D0-9cp]*", ACTION=="remove", PROGRAM="/bin/sh -c 'echo  defaults.ctl.card 0 > /etc/asound.conf; echo defaults.pcm.card 0 >>/etc/asound.conf'"

File/Save/Quit


Run

sudo apt install pavucontrol
pavucontrol

Go to configuration and set all the audio output to off except the USB headset.

Tags:

Usb

Headset

Lubuntu

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