Member Avatar for tom.magaro

I am trying to get a friend set up to record and edit music using Audacity. The machine is running Ubuntu Zorn. However, when we try to run the software, we get the message that no audio devices were found.

I installed both the operating system and the editing software using the default settings. Is there something else that I need to do to get the system working?

Thanks,

Tom

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Dani AI

Generated

As and noted, missing pieces of the system audio stack or volume utilities are often the root cause. Beyond package installation, a short set of system-level checks will show whether the OS actually sees the sound hardware, whether a driver/module is loaded, and whether an audio server or permission issue is preventing access. The commands below collect the most useful diagnostics before changing configuration or installing anything else.

Run the following in a terminal to gather status information:

lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 audio
lsusb
aplay -l
arecord -l
lsmod | grep snd
dmesg | grep -i -E "sound|snd|audio|firmware"
id -nG

Interpretation notes and next steps (concise):

  • No device shown by lspci/lsusb: hardware may be disabled in BIOS/UEFI, unplugged, or faulty. Check physical connections and firmware/BIOS settings.
  • Device present in lspci but not in aplay/arecord: kernel driver likely not loaded or firmware missing. dmesg output will indicate firmware errors; loading an appropriate kernel module (for example modprobe for the card's driver) or installing required firmware packages is the usual remedy.
  • lsmod shows snd modules but no usable devices: a user-permissions problem or an exclusive-locking audio server may be blocking access. Ensure the account is in the audio group (use id -nG) and log out/in after changes; stop any specialty audio servers that might have grabbed the device.
  • If volumes/mutes are zeroed at the mixer or the device is muted at the hardware level, restore reasonable levels.

These checks narrow down whether the problem is hardware, kernel/driver, permissions, or a conflicting user-space process — and make further fixes much more targeted than reinstalling packages alone.

Recommended Answers

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Member Avatar for rubberman

Do you have the pulseaudio plugins installed? Also, the alsa audio drivers are required.

Member Avatar for tom.magaro

Thanks, rubberman. I'll check it out.

Member Avatar for mike_2000_17

Yeah, like rubberman said, to have good audio driver support, beyond the basics, you need pulseaudio and ALSA. Modern versions of Ubuntu or other debian-based distros install those by default, as far as I know, but this is definitely the first place you need to look to solve your problem. Obviously, you also have to make sure to set audacity to hook up to pulseaudio and ALSA (which, again, should be the default behavior). Here is a nice tutorial on this.

I think that you should make sure to install pavucontrol (pulseaudio volume control), because that should pull in any other things that you might be lacking for being able to record audio. Also, on Linux, installing VLC is a very good idea because this be-all-end-all video player pulls in pretty much every conceivable video and audio codecs and drivers (or driver servers, like pulseaudio). You might also want to install alsamixer or other alsa-related tools (just search in the software center for anything related to alsa, and install whatever seems relevant).

Member Avatar for tom.magaro

Thanks to you to Mike

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