Getting Sound to Work on Firefox and Flash with Linux Ubuntu

Getting sound to work with Flash on Firefox can be quite frustrating using Linux Ubuntu. The usual problem is that although sound does work for the system, there is no sound for flash players (Adobe) on Firefox (e.g., Youtube), although there is usually video.

For starters you can check to ensure the sound configuration is correct for your ALSA mixer, by running in the terminal:
sudo alsaconf

If that doesn't work, you can also try running the following in your terminal, which works for some:
mv ~/.asoundrc .asoundrc.old mv ~/.asoundrc.asoundconf ~/.asoundrc.asoundconf.old

Or, you could try the following in the terminal:
sudo apt-get alsa-oss sudo gedit /etc/firefox/firefoxrc

and then include the line
FIREFOX_DSP="aoss"
within that opened file.

If all else fails (which did for me), go into the Linux repositories and install (or reinstall, if already installed) all ALSA and Flash related software. Do a search for the terms alsa and flash (including the latest Adobe flash player). Install (or reinstall) all related packages you find, just in case. And hopefully, that gets your sound working for flash players in Firefox.

If that still doesn't work, the only thing I would recommend is using another browser, but oftentimes if it doesn't work for Firefox, it isn't going to work with another Linux browser like Epiphany either. So your best bet is to run Internet Explorer using Wine, and that typically works.
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Enabling 5.1 Surround Sound Audio on Linux (Ubuntu)

In some cases, when using a Linux OS like Ubuntu, there will be issues like devices will not working properly. For example, you may only hear sound coming from 2 speakers instead of all speakers.

In order to convert the 2.1 sound (or no sound) and enable 5.1 surround sound audio on your Linux system, you must first disable your onboard sound via editing your motherboard's BIOS settings. If you do not know how to do that or encounter problems trying, you can alternatively try to disable onboard sound through Linux and bypassing the BIOS settings.

Once you've disabled your onboard sound, follow this procedure to edit to asoundrc and configure the surround output so that it transfers stereo output to all 6 channels, instead of only through the front channel speakers:

1. Run in the terminal: gedit .asoundrc
2. Add to the file:
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "surround51"
slave.channels 6
route_policy duplicate
}

That should work. To ensure that the issue is the sound card and not the speakers, run either of the following in your terminal:
aplay -l
- or -
lspci -v

Try aplay -1 first. If neither of the commands list your sound card, then it means the drivers are not installed. If your sound card is listed (and 5.1 surround sound is not working), it may mean there is an issue with the speakers.
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Disabling Onboard Sound without Editing BIOS Settings on Linux

If you are trying to direct sound to your external card and would like to disable onboard sound from your motherboard without editing the BIOS settings (for whatever reason), try the following procedure:

1. Run the command lsmod in the terminal and find the mods for your internal sound card
2. Next, run the command sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist in the terminal
3. For each module in the file, append "blacklist (module)" where (module) is the name of your sound module. Basically, we are telling the system to load the external card and not the onboard soundcard.
Here is an example:
# turn off internal soundcard
blacklist snd_intel8x0
blacklist snd_ac97_codec
blacklist snd_ac97_bus
4. Reboot.

If the above mentioned procedure does not work for you, alternatively you can try to force your external card to be the default one, via:

1. Run in the terminal: sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d
2. Change the index for your external soundcard to 0 and switch the onboard sound to 1
For example:
options snd-emu10k1x index=0
options snd-intel8x0 index=1

In this case snd-emu10k1x (Audigy) is the external soundcard and now has been set to 0, and snd-intel8x0 (onboard) is the onboard sound and is now card 1. Of course the soundcard codes may be different in your case.
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Repair an Installation on Linux (Ubuntu)

If you want to know how to do a repair installation on a Linux (e.g. Ubuntu) system for instances where you do not want to perform a complete operating system (OS) reinstallation and would also like to keep your current settings and configuration, just run the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install --fix-broken

That fix should do the trick in case you accidentally got some of your packages removed. But if somehow that doesn't work and you are forced to do a full reinstallation, the directories you should backup in order to maintain and reset your current settings and configuration would be the /home and /etc folders (copy these onto backup media and paste them back after the reinstallation).
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