PulseAudio is a powerful cross-platform (meaning that it can be used in different operating system environments) sound server. You can use it to directly access your audio hardware and carry the audio signals to output devices. Or because of the way itâs designed, you can use it as a front-end for the existing, much older and mature sound servers, such as ALSA (itâs primarily an API for accessing audio drivers), OSS etc as well.
The thing about PulseAudio is that (at least in my experience) it gives you all these awesome features, but for some reason, it has never worked that well for me. But ALSA, on the other hand, has always been an extremely stable one and has worked on all of my audio hardware devices.
Now in Ubuntu Linux, a few years ago, they decided to use PulseAudio as the default sound server. But since PulseAudio cannot directly communicate with the audio hardware, it still needs tools like ALSA to function. So what happens is that, after mixing the audio (on the software level), PulseAudio simply âhands it over to ALSA, and ALSA takes it from there.

Anyhow, in my case, I suspect that itâs this, the poor communication between ALSA -> PulseAudio is the reason for most of these issues, because every time I enable âaudio amplificationâ in PulseAudio, my audio output mutes (update: This is no longer true. PulseAudio works really well under my new Dell notebook).
Now in the past, I used to use the PulseAudio Configuration window to disable this audio amplification, but in Ubuntu 11.10, Pulse just enables this audio amplification automatically. So most of the time, I end up with no sound outputs.
However, out of these frustrations, I thought, âto hell with it!â (many bad words were filtered :D). âIâm gonna remove PulseAudio and just use ALSAâ. I just did it, and now all my audio outputs work perfectly fine!
So if youâre also having the same or any other similar issues with PulseAudio in Ubuntu, then perhaps you can do the same, and who knows, it might save your day ;-). But remember, if you remove PulseAudio, you no longer will get that pretty looking âVolume Indicator appletâ anymore. And if PulseAudio is working just fine for you, then I highly recommend that you stick with it.

Remove PulseAudio in Ubuntu
1. First, letâs remove PulseAudio from your Ubuntu OS. I donât remember when Ubuntu used to come installed by default, but in most versions like 18, 20, and 22, the below command should remove it.
sudo apt-get autoremove pulseaudio
2. Now do a reboot since PulseAudio daemon (system service) is also running from the background. So itâs better to let the OS update everything.
3. Now the next time you log in to your Desktop, you wonât see the Volume Icon around the system tray area.
Now ALSA is installed by default in Ubuntu but since we have to have a GUI for configuring audio mixing, letâs install the default tool that came in Gnome desktop called: âGnome-ALSA-Mixerâ (a GTK+ front-end).
For that, please use the below command.
sudo apt-get install gnome-alsamixer
4. Iâm not sure whether this is necessary, but just to make sure, reboot your PC again so the configuration is updated.
5. As said before, for various reasons, I have to disable the audio amplification; otherwise, the audio is muted. So if you too not getting any audio outputs after running Totem, for instance, then simply open your Terminal window and enter the below command.
gnome-alsamixer
This should open a new window, similar to the one below. Simply remove the âcheckâ mark from its window that says âExternal Amplifierâ, which should solve most of your issues.
Update: If you have an amplifier, try leaving the âExternal Amplifierâ enabled first. If you donât get any sounds with it enabled, then you can try disabling it (thanks âChrisâ for pointing it out).

Oh, and make sure Master output, PCM etc., arenât muted.
Update: If youâre having issues while using âGnome ALSA Mixerâ, then try âQasMixerâ, a new ALSA mixer GUI. Itâs also known to fix some of the run-time errors of âGnome ALSA âŠâ.
Well, thatâs pretty much it. If everything goes according to plan, you should hear your speakers screaming! Thatâs it, and good luck.
Another good alternative is volti.
First remove pulseaudio as in this post (thanks for that by the way!)
Then install volti in Synaptic, Ubuntu Software Center or the command line â sudo apt-get install volti.
I found the direct alsa controls given in this post (volbar & alsavol) worked sporadically, and sometimes the keyboard shortcuts stopped working randomly. I could always start them up again (a BIG plus over pulseaudio), but volti works flawlessly so far without stopping, and it has a nicer icon-tray and notification.
Oops â I got this mixed up with another similar post! This one isnât about volbar or alsavol, but volti is still a good option!
Thanks.
Hooray! Now Thunderbird doesnât hang anymore in my fresh 13.04 install !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:D.
Solved my problem with WINE on Mint Maya!
Excellent! :).
Thanks! your post was complementary to help me to solve my problem.
If your problems persist check this one: http://www.hecticgeek.com/2012/01/how-to-remove-pulseaudio-use-alsa-ubuntu-linux/
Finally
Grettings from MĂ©xico. đ
Hi âalezithopâ,
Thank you also! :).
Great Advice⊠Really worked well.. Thanks a lot.. Iâve trying to do this since 1 week.. Now skype finally working without annoying pulseaudio.. (y).. đ
Iâm glad it helped you out Devneet :).
Great it simply works, before I got a problem with Voice recorder as well đ now itâs fixed, but probably because Iâve reconfigured all sound devices becasu after uninstall sound dissappeard fully, and I went into KDE Setting -> System Settings -> Multimedia There are a lot of differenciations and on first place was USB .. something which prevent all sound to work, Iâve moved it down and test that nest is working, all is fine now!
I got Toshiba Tecra R850, and my microphone problem is now fixed too !!
Excellent! :D.
Did the trick, but kill pulseaudio and adding
autospawn = no
in ~/.pulse/client.conf did the trick too. Anyway great tutorial đ
Thank you.
In my case Skype problem was solved by:
sudo apt-get install libasound2-plugins:i386
Iâm using Ubuntu 13.04 x64, Skype 4.2 (i386)
Hmm, interesting :). Thank you.
Thank you very much!! Who could think that PulseAudio was the real problem? I uninstalled and now everythingâs alright.
Youâre welcome.
Thank you so much! Have been working for days to try and figure this out. You are the only person that even suggested issues with pulse audio. Worked GREAT! Thanks again
The pleasure is all mine.
Hi,
So I had this issue first with my laptop working on 13.04 in which Iâd plug my headphones, but the sound would play from both the headphones and the laptopâs speakers. So, I tried this fix but in the end, Alsa wonât open. I tried installing qasmixer as suggested but now, all my audio is muted and the actual hardware doesnât appear in the sound options anymore.. What did I miss?
Wow I was muted all that time. You may remove my post as a whole đ
:D.
had a problem with flash video playing way too fast. removing pulseaudio fixed it. in vlc i got no audio at all. it was somehow configured for using hdmi device. changing that to internal audio fixed the sound in vlc.
:).
Thanks bro. It works very well. You save my day in my company.
No problem ronak, the pleasure is all mine đ
hi there i followed your instructions one by one but now i have anoher problem nd i dont seem to know why please help.
i hav a meenee mnw737 and i recently upgraded the system to ubuntu 12.04.
ok to the problem:
for soem odd reason my laptop doesnt recognize that my headphones are plugged in and not the sound only comes from the laptop speakers. furthermore there is no headphone option on the alsamixer either.
would really appreaciate any advice guys thanks
Try installing âQasMixerâ (see the below instructions) âŠ
http://www.hecticgeek.com/2012/09/qasmixer-adds-a-system-tray-icon-and-a-mixer-for-alsa-ubuntu/
Thank You! It workedâŠ.
Youâre welcome.
When I was using PulseAudio on my Toshiba L655D laptop, Iâd press FN+3 or 4 to control the volume. However after updating the OS, my audio stopped working. I thought it was VLC at first but soon found out it was PulseAudio. Thank you for this alternative solution. Now my volume control works perfectly! Again I thank you. I honestly dought there paying you enough for doing this. đ
Youâre welcome Jesse đ .
I remove pulseaudio in Ubuntu 14.04, but, by doing this, it remove more packets than the ones of pulseaudio, as ubuntu-desktop. I canât remove pulseaudio without ubuntu-desktop and, without ubuntu-desktop, thereâre a lot of things that the system needs to work properlyâŠ
Any suggestion?
These packets:
indicator-sound libcanberra-pulse pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pulseaudio-module-x11 ubuntu-desktop unity-control-center unity-control-center-signon webaccounts-extension-common xul-ext-webaccounts
Have you tried manually disabling the âPulseAudioâ daemon rather than uninstalling it ?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2066228
Thank you so much for this article. I was trying to set up PulseAudio and it caused me nothing but headache. So glad to have ALSA back and now with the GUI front-end especially.
Youâre welcome đ .
Hey guys thanks for this guide. I havenât yet tried it because I thought my external Schiit magni&modi were working but I was wrong. When I play flac files 92 Khz the sound feels kinda digital. Now I only play music through vlc but Iâm gonna try this and hope it works. One question please.using gnome alas mixer the audio doesnât get resampled like in pulseaudio is that correct? As soon as my new headphones arrive Iâm going to try and If I have problems Iâm gonna ask for help. Cheers
Hi Reni,
Itâs actually a one guy đ and Iâll try my best to help you out.
I followed your instructions. Works fine. I installed xfce4-mixer and it shows up on my panel. When I right click on it and select run audio mixer, I get this:
GStreamer was unable to detect any sound devices. Some sound system specific GStreamer packages may be missing. It may also be a permissions problem.
What should I do?
Thanks!!
Hi Randy,
Assuming that youâre using the Unity desktop, get rid of âxfce4-mixerâ and use the one suggested at the end of the article (âQasMixerâ) and then try playing something.