[SOLVED] intermittent sound

Hi, all.

I'm new to Linux. Just installed Zorin OS 15 Core.

My sound became intermittent and then stopped working altogether in VLC. The default player has the same outcome. If I wait long enough, the sound starts up again for a fraction of a second and then stops. I uninstalled VLC and used the default video player. Still no sound.

I read this thread: viewtopic.php?t=3365
1. Medibuntu search takes me to http://www.videolan.org/developers/libdvdcss.html - should I install it?
2. I don't see a single package named non-free-codecs (see 2nd screenshot). I'm probably doing something wrong. Thoughts?
3. I installed any package listed as starting with "vlc". I got a whole bunch of text at the end of the install (see 1st screenshot). I did also install "faac" and "flac" after searching for them (as recommended by Wolfman in the post I cited earlier).

Rebooted. Still no sound. Any help is welcome.

Thanks.

Hi, Please copy (using 'Select All') the following into a terminal window (Ctrl+ Alt+ T to open terminal):

Code:

lspci -v | grep -i audio

and post back the results.

Thanks.

Thanks, Swarfendor.

Result:
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD Audio Controller
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. 82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD Audio Controller
02:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0fbc (rev a1)

On another note. The sound has started up again. After making my post, I had powered down for a couple hours. When I started back up, I happened to go to Youtube and sound worked. I tried VLC and sound worked too. I rebooted to see if the result holds. So far it does. Although, I did get one instance of intermittence when a game video was playing on the Steam store page. Not sure how long the sound will last or if it will stay for good. But I do still appreciate your help and am interested in trying to figure this out so it doesn't recur.

Update: Sound off again.

See if this fix sorts it:
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/18723

It didn't allow me access to /etc (Permission Denied), so I used sudo, hope that was ok. Copied asound.conf there. Rebooted. Still no sound.

Update - Sound just turned up now. I did not reboot again. Was browsing and then thought to try VLC again and suddenly it is back on. Did not do any more reboots since copying the asound.conf. It went off for a few seconds again. And then now came back on again.

Found this https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic. ... 8&t=117247
Installed alsa-utils and pulseaudio. Pulse audio removed all my sound devices. Removed pulse audio and disabled auto mute on alsa-utils. Digital output S/PDIF does not work but the Headphones device (which some times changes its name to Line out audio, don't know why) has working sound.
Hope this lasts.

Update - a few reboots later it is still working. Gonna mark this thread as solved. Fingers crossed.

Thanks, Swarfendor. I will keep an extra copy of the asound.conf file you recommended, for future use. It may be that Alsa and that file are both needed to fix the sound problem.

I still have intermittent sound issues because it's a Soundblaster card. Every alternate boot has sound/no sound. The downside to ALSA only packages renders silent YouTube and Netflix.