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I cannot hear any sounds on the computer

If you cannot hear any sounds on your computer, for example when you try to play music, go through the following troubleshooting tips.

Assurez-vous que le son n'est pas sur « Muet »

Open the system menu and make sure that the sound is not muted or turned down.

Some laptops have mute switches or keys on their keyboards — try pressing that key to see if it unmutes the sound.

You should also check that you have not muted the application that you are using to play sound (for example, your music player or movie player). The application may have a mute or volume button in its main window, so check that.

Also, you can check the Applications tab in the Sound GUI:

  1. Open the Activities overview and start typing Sound.

  2. Cliquez sur Son pour ouvrir le panneau.

  3. Under Volume Levels, check that your application is not muted.

Vérifiez que les haut-parleurs sont allumés et correctement branchés

If your computer has external speakers, make sure that they are turned on and that the volume is turned up. Make sure that the speaker cable is securely plugged into the “output” audio socket on your computer. This socket is usually light green in color.

Some sound cards can switch between the socket they use for output (to the speakers) and the socket for input (from a microphone, for instance). The output socket may be different when running Linux, Windows or Mac OS. Try connecting the speaker cable to a different audio socket on your computer.

A final thing to check is that the audio cable is securely plugged into the back of the speakers. Some speakers have more than one input, too.

Check that the correct sound device is selected

Some computers have multiple “sound devices” installed. Some of these are capable of outputting sound and some are not, so you should check that you have the correct sound device selected. This might involve some trial-and-error to choose the right one.

  1. Open the Activities overview and start typing Sound.

  2. Cliquez sur Son pour ouvrir le panneau.

  3. Under Output, change the Profile settings for the selected device and play a sound to see if it works. You might need to go through the list and try each profile.

    En cas d'échec, faites la même chose avec tous les périphériques de la liste.

Vérifier que la carte son a bien été détectée

Your sound card may not have been detected properly probably because the drivers for the card are not installed. You may need to install the drivers for the card manually. How you do this depends on the type of the card.

Run the lspci command in the Terminal to find out what sound card you have:

  1. Go to the Activities overview and open a Terminal.

  2. Run lspci as superuser; either type sudo lspci and type your password, or type su, enter the root (administrative) password, then type lspci.

  3. Check if an audio controller or audio device is listed: in such case you should see the make and model number of the sound card. Also, lspci -v shows a list with more detailed information.

Vous trouverez certainement comment rechercher et installer les pilotes pour votre carte. Le mieux est de vous adresser à des forums spécialisés pour votre distribution Linux.

Si vraiment vous ne trouvez pas de pilotes pour votre carte son, il ne vous reste plus qu'à en acheter une nouvelle. Vous avez le choix entre une carte son interne et une carte son externe, à brancher sur un port USB.