How To: Fix sound issues with ALC888 on Ubuntu12.04 and derivatives

This article arises from a problem (ironic by the way ...) that I had with Ubuntu 12.04 and all distros based on this particular version. The ironic thing about the problem is that for an LTS, it was the first version I used and it even gave me a problem on this PC. In this case, a sound problem.

The problem is not actually very serious, but it becomes annoying in daily use. It consists of this: I turn on the PC with headphones connected, I enter Ubuntu (or a derivative of the LTS) and listen to some music. When I get tired and disconnect the headphones, and I want to listen to music through the monitor speakers, nothing at all plays. If I turn on the PC with the headphones unplugged, I hear it through the speakers, but I plug in the headphones and it sounds out of both audio outputs.

The first days of use I looked for and I did not find information about it, so I quit. Now I installed elementaryOS Luna Beta 2 (and of course, it's based on Ubuntu 12.04), and to my surprise the bug was still there. I searched again and at last i found a solution in a couple of forums. The steps to follow are these:

1. We open the mixer ALSA running the command: alsamixer Once there we check where it says «chip»To make sure we have the ALC888. This chip is generally integrated into sound systems Intel HDA.
2. We close the mixer with the key [esc]. Next, we make sure we have a Intel HDA (it must be one of these for the hack to work). We write in the terminal: lsmod | grep snd We look for some lines that say snd_hda_intel. This means that we meet the requirements.
3. We execute the command: sudo <editor> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf They replace by your preferred editor, such as nano, leafpad, or gedit.
4. At the end of the file, we will add a line of code, which goes like this: options snd-hda-intel model=auto If that doesn't work for you, try options snd-hda-intel model=auto probe_mask=1 That tells ALSA to automatically and generally identify the sound card, rather than trying to establish an exact model.
5. We save the file and restart. Then we test.

In case of problems ...

It is possible that when following these steps you may have a problem, I leave some with your solution:

• «The file that I must edit is not in the path that you comment«. Maybe it's in a different path, you can try installing the mlocate package and running: cd / then locate alsa-base.conf to locate the file. If not, try creating it from scratch and add the line of code.
• «I added one of the lines, saved, rebooted and now I have no sound. The sound panel tells me 'Exit for clumsy'«. That code may not be correct. Try to change it for another, or in any case delete it. Then reboot and voila.
• «Neither line worked for me«. It is possible that your integrated sound is somewhat different, in any case you should try changing model = auto for a more exact model based on your Chip.

That's all, something very simple, I hope it has served you. If you have any questions or problems, below are the comments 🙂