I need some speakers for very occasional use, so quality wasn't the main issue. I bought Creative A40 2.0 USB speakers, but to my surprise, I can't get any sound out of them at all.

The box in question uses an on-board NVidea sound card, and I've checked that I've plugged the speakers into the correct port. Beyond that, I'm devoid of ideas. Maybe the USB drivers required are not standard?

All idea welcome

Check if the default output is going to those speakers (if you use pulseaudio, try with pavucontrol or kmix).

The Phonon control panel, in System Settings > Multimedia > Phonon should also allow you to select your preferred Audio device. Further Pulseaudio configuration can be carried out on the "Audio Hardware Setup" tab.

Pavucontrol shows the Output Devices set to Analog Output, with the volume at 80%. The Configuration tab says that the Internal Audio profile is Analog Stereo Output.

In System Settings the output devices are ordered as:

HDA NVidia (ALC888 Analog)
PulseAudio
PulseAudio Sound Server
Default

I have tried changing the order, to put PA first, though not convinced that it should be in this case, but silence reigns.

Anything else I could check? The KDE version on SL is early - 4.3.4 - so no speaker test page.

I use USB speakers but not PulseAudio, so this may not be entirely correct:

Try to run alsamixer in a terminal and see which soundcard is your default. If you press F6 you can view another soundcard. Make sure your USB Mixer isn't muted or 0 % volume.

Somewhere, earlier today, I found that the default sound system was set to aRts. I changed that to alsa, and hoped that I had found a cure. Sadly I hadn't. Yes, I had already checked using alsamixer in a terminal - always one of the first checks I make. I'm just not getting any more clues as to what is wrong, at the moment.

It strikes me that it is entirely possible that the on-board sound has failed. (It is enabled in BIOS, I checked.) I don't suppose there is any way to check that.

If you want sound from the USB speakers, I don't think you have to worry about the on-board sound card (unless I'm misunderstanding something). My main guesses for the absence of sound are
a) Wrong default sound output. Do you get any sound from the on-board sound card, e.g. if you plug in headphones? You could try to disable your sound card in the BIOS and see if you get any sound from the USB speakers.
b) A channel that's muted/0 % (seems unlikely if you've double-checked).
c) Something about PulseAudio that I don't understand.

Are you sure the default sound system was aRts? Can you tell us more about your system (distro, version of KDE workspace, ALSA etc.)?

Hans wrote:If you want sound from the USB speakers, I don't think you have to worry about the on-board sound card (unless I'm misunderstanding something). My main guesses for the absence of sound are
a) Wrong default sound output. Do you get any sound from the on-board sound card, e.g. if you plug in headphones?

That's something I hadn't thought of. Yes, the sound is not loud, but I can play a CD and hear the sound on headphones (quality of these headphones is unknown - if this is the only option I'll see if I have better ones.)

You could try to disable your sound card in the BIOS and see if you get any sound from the USB speakers.

Eh? I don't have a second sound card, and I assume that without any soundcard there would not be any sound?

b) A channel that's muted/0 % (seems unlikely if you've double-checked).

Correct.

c) Something about PulseAudio that I don't understand.

I'm using an external soundcard to drive 5.1 speakers on this laptop, and PA works fine with it. I think the problem is with the ALC888 audio chipset. There are a number of posts on the Internet about no or low sound on this chipset. The motherboard is over 4 years old, too, so if the chipset was problematic in Linux, drivers may have been dropped altogether. One post said that Linux drivers for the chipset were available on the Realtek site, but I couldn't find them - again the posting was old. Incidentally, at one point when I put the ALC888 to the top of the preference list in Multimedia Settings I got a notification that it was not working and the system would fall back to PA.

Are you sure the default sound system was aRts?

Can you tell us more about your system (distro, version of KDE workspace, ALSA etc.)?

Fairly sure, but to be honest I can't remember exactly where I found that. It was somewhere not altogether expected, IIRC.

The system runs Scientific Linux (64-bit), which, as you know, is a RHEL clone. The KDE version is old - 4.3.4-19. Alsa is 1.0.21 - again, old, I think. The other issue is phonon-backends - gstreamer is the only one available, so I can't test it on xine or vlc.

One thing I have noted - on this laptop I have alsa-firmware-1.0.24.1-2.fc15.noarch and there is no equivalent firmward package on the box in question.

Altogether, it's not looking good At some point I'll have to upgrade the box, but I don't want to do it just now - other priorities

Duh!! Anne is a headbanging idiot!! After all that work, I finally examined the speakers themselves, and there on the top, next to the on/off switch is a recessed volume knob! How stupid can you get? Now they work fine. (Using PA, of course )

Thanks for trying to help.

I just googled ALC888 on Arch and it apparently is working fine - which you just confirmed

I found plenty of messages saying it didn't, which discouraged me, but yes, there is no problem here. The speakers are designed to sit slightly inclined away from you, and I simply hadn't seen the recessed knob. Entirely pebcak

My sister is using a Linux with a USB speakers on it. Try the JBL Pebbles, they have a sleek look and are also compact. It can be used as USB speaker and it also has an aux input so you could also use it on an ipad, mp3 players etc.