sound volume indicator not working

[rbdflyboy]

Have downloaded and installed Lubuntu 14.04 two days ago on my older dell pc as a dual boot with XP. Removed and reinstalled Lubuntu today and the volume control in the lxpanel is still totally inop. It will drag up and down...there's no volume change. Been googling for three days trying to find a fix. Haven't found anything to date...other than people with sound problems...that's not my issue. Am willing to fix it, just need a little direction. Am very leary and hesitant to use fixes form online sources because the hdd for my HP Pavilion is now sitting on my table because it fails to boot. It had XP and Ubuntu 14.04 on it originally and switched to Mint17. Am quite sure my hdd got messed up because of using bad information. If there's no fix for this...I'll live with it! Please, bare with me, I'm older have have used XP forever and have only been involved with Linux distros for a couple of months. Thanks for your time.

[Rex Bouwense]

Welcome to the LXDE forum. It really does you no good to try to resurrect a thread that is unsolved (or solved). It is best to start your own thread which I have done for you. You will get more attention, hopefully.

[Rex Bouwense]

Just had a thought. Where are you trying to adjust the volume? If you right click the sound icon, it will lead you to the alsamixer control panel. Is that where your adjustments are not making any difference?

[seppalta]

I never liked alsa-mixer; had much better control with pulseaudio. So I would install pulseaudio and pavucontrol and use them to get control of your sound.

Likely there is nothing tecnically wrong with your "messed up" hard drive, just some abused information on it. Reinstall a good linux system on the linux partition replacing whatever you now have there. Grub will automatically configure to find your windows system and your new linux system.

[rbdflyboy]

Hi Rex, sorry about the post...didn't want to get in trouble creating a duplicate post.

On the panel, left click the sound icon and the slider window pops up, the mute box is unchecked and can drag the slider up and down,this has no effect on the volume...stays at the same level.
When right clicking a window pops up and can select the alsamixer v1.0.27.2 thinking this is an indicator...figured it's best to err on the side of caution and not mess with it.
The very first column is labled "Master", above it appears 12<>12 and is the only column where the the Master is red. The Master H,Headphon,and PCM are all white in color. These first four colums are the only ones that show results....hope this helps.

[rbdflyboy]

I never liked alsa-mixer; had much better control with pulseaudio. So I would install pulseaudio and pavucontrol and use them to get control of your sound.

Likely there is nothing tecnically wrong with your "messed up" hard drive, just some abused information on it. Reinstall a good linux system on the linux partition replacing whatever you now have there. Grub will automatically configure to find your windows system and your new linux system.

Problem is can't get past "Disk boot error" don't have a CD to install.

Do pulseaudio and pavucontrol work right out od the box? Will want to remove alsamixer completely...and thinking synaptic would be the best way to accomplish this, thanks for the speedy reply.

[Rex Bouwense]

What you are calling an indicator is actually the control panel. To adjust, use the arrows left and right, and up and down. You can't or shouldn't be able to break anything because you can adjust the levels back to where they are now.
Seppalta recommends pulseaudio which you can try if you like. I use alsamixer and since I have simple needs, it works for me.

[rbdflyboy]

What you are calling an indicator is actually the control panel. To adjust, use the arrows left and right, and up and down. You can't or shouldn't be able to break anything because you can adjust the levels back to where they are now.
Seppalta recommends pulseaudio which you can try if you like. I use alsamixer and since I have simple needs, it works for me.

Thanks for this, got the help menu up and made some small adjustments. There's nothing to indicate how to activate the volume control in the panel..also, ticking the mute box has no effect...maybe the volume control isn't tied to alsamixer and is just installed in the panel by default? Might be missing a plugin? Have Radio Tray installed and use it when playing online poker...works great.

[rbdflyboy]

Well now...can't stop laughing....now we have two audio controls. First off installed pulseaudio and pavucontrol and that got the audio to adjust,but, not from the icon in the panel. The reason for going this route is because the audio control did not work even while playing a radio stream in the browser.
Then removed alsamixer. Removed the audio icon from the panel and it came back?...clicked on it and because most times the drop down menus are very sketchy accidently clicked on mute. Lost all audio....restarted. Fired up Radio Tray...no audio...clicked on the icon, it was muted, unchecked the box after multi tries...audio came back on. Now, thinking maybe we're giving alsamixer a bad rap reinstalled it....still no audio control at the pamel Happened to notice alsamixer has a gui...installed that also...now can control my volume from the icon and a pulseaudio shortcut on the desktop. Now, just need to figure put how to get the alsamixer to show. The pulseaudio is now the default...should be able to acquire the alsamixer from the lxterminal. Those small adjustments made earlier improved my sound quality.
Thank you both very much.

BTW just tried the lxterminal and the alsamixer control poped right up and was able to fine tune my audio