If you had any application that was playing audio, it will go silent at this point. This will force the audio system in Ubuntu to reload. Inside your terminal window (it should be behind the text editor), run the following command: $ pulseaudio -k Once you have saved the changes to the file, a couple things still need to be done in order to have this change go into effect. I ended up with a value of 0.0075 ( 0.005 was too quiet) which I felt gave a good maximum volume and resulted in better overall control over the volume range. I also decided that 0.01 was technically louder than I’d ever use. I tested out 0.05 and found that the max volume was much louder than I would ever use. Making the number smaller reduces the max volume while making the number larger increases the max volume. Note that the value 0.01 can be adjusted as needed to change how quiet and loud the volume is. Update this section of text to look like the following (changes are highlighted): Type it in and press enter.Ī file editor will open up with the file loaded. You will then be prompted for your user password. This can be done by typing the following in the terminal and pressing enter: $ gksu gedit /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/ Next, we need to edit the /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/ file as root. This can be done by pulling up Ubuntu’s dash (clicking the Ubuntu icon at the top of the icon bar along the left of the screen), typing in “terminal” and clicking the enter key. Unfortunately, the solution requires modifying a file as root, which can be a bit daunting, but I believe in you, so let’s modify that file.įirst, open a terminal. I found many different bug reports and suggested solutions to this issue, but only this one by user sen in the Arch Linux forums fixed both problems. It was if somebody muted the volume.Īfter playing around with the settings for a while with no change in loudness or the sound cutting out at low volume, I dug in deeper. As I lowered the volume, the sound went from far too loud to completely silent when I moved from around 40% volume down to 35% volume. Sound then flooded my headphones with the volume being far too loud for comfortable listening. I plugged it into my system, opened Sound Settings, and chose “Audio Adapter Analog Stereo” from the device options. The specific model that I purchased is by Sabrent and has a model number of AU-MMSA. I decided to fix this by purchasing a cheap USB sound card and using it instead. The audio port in one of my old motherboards starting putting out static in the right stereo channel.