RH Speaker Not Working

[MartynJS]

The right hand speaker on my HP Omnibook does not work.  Headphones and bluetooth are fine.  I see that this is a common problem.  Any help would e appreciated.  Running OS Linux Mint 22.3

[Jerry_57]

Hi @MartynJS,

Welcome to the HP Support Community.

Thank you for posting your query. I will be glad to help you.

To fix your right-hand speaker on Linux Mint, you can verify your sound output balance or use the alsamixer terminal utility to unmute the channels. Since Bluetooth and headphones work, your audio hardware is likely fine, and the issue probably stems from a muted channel, unbalanced settings, or a kernel issue.
 

Step 1: Check Sound Preferences and Balance:
 

Sometimes the audio balance is accidentally shifted entirely to the left channel.
 

1. Click the speaker icon on your taskbar and select Sound Settings.
    
2. Go to the Output Devices tab and select your internal speakers.
    
3. Ensure the Balance slider is set to the exact centre.

Step 2: Unmute Channels in AlsaMixer:

If your balance is correct, a channel inside the low-level ALSA driver might be muted or set to 0.
 

1. Open your Terminal.
    
2. Type alsamixer and press Enter.
    
3. Press F6 to select your correct sound card (usually the default PulseAudio or HDA Intel).
    
4. Use the Left/Right arrow keys to navigate through the channels.
    
5. Look for your Master or Speaker channel. If you see MM below a column, it means it is muted. Press the M key on your keyboard to change it to OO (unmuted).
    
6. If the volume bars show an imbalance, adjust them using the Up/Down arrows. Press Esc to exit when finished.
    
7. Save the ALSA changes by running sudo alsactl restore in the terminal. 

Step 3: Install PulseAudio Volume Control:

If you require a more visual mixer to manage individual speaker channels:
 

1. Open the Terminal and type sudo apt install pavucontrol, then hit Enter.
    
2. Once installed, open PulseAudio Volume Control from your application menu.
    
3. Go to the Output Devices tab, find your built-in speakers, and verify that both the left and right channel percentages are unmuted and set evenly.

I hope this will help.

 

Take care and have a good day.

[MartynJS]

Thanks Jerry_57.  The F6 trick worked a treat.  I could not see any way of changing things as you described but I did the "sudo alsactl restore" instruction and it has fixed the problem.