HDMI is not displayed in the "Sound" settings on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

I need some assistance, I have 2 laptops, a Toshiba and a DELL XPS M1330, the problem is using my DELL laptop, when I use the HDMI cable to use the TV as monitor the display works fine however the sound only work in the laptop speakers I can't use the TV speakers.

When I go to "Sound" settings to select the HDMI in the "Play sound through", I can't select the HDMI because it never show up. I can only see, "headphones and speakers".

So as a summary the, display works but the sound it doesn't in the TV. Any ideas?

5 Answers

I follow the below workaround whenever I connect laptop to a TV:

1. Connect HDMI cable to TV and switch on the TV.

2. Run the below command on a console (It worked without sudo)

   pulseaudio -k 

3. Open Sound settings, you should see "HDMI/Display Port" entry under Output tab.

To get HDMI audio working on Ubuntu, please download the deb file for your version of Ubuntu from this link:

and install it via cli or the software centre.

1. For older packages go to page:

2. Then force reload alsa using the following command : sudo alsa force-reload

3. After that, select HDMI from the sound menu as shown below (for me this option appeared only after installing the above mentioned package)

   

Please note HDMI audio function tested on Intel graphics only on a Lenovo Flex2 14 laptop

It seems that your laptop has dual graphics which may need you to install the Nvidia binary driver and Bumblebee from this guide:

Try the following:
Reinstall Alsa and Pulse Audio

Open an Terminal (CTRL+ATL+T).

Try to reinstall pulse audio and Alsa, open terminal and enter the following commands:

Purge Alsa and Pulse audio using the command:

sudo apt-get remove --purge alsa-base pulseaudio 

Now install again Alsa and Pulse Audio:

sudo apt-get install alsa-base pulseaudio 

Then, reload Alsa:

sudo alsa force-reload 

Done, if it is not working try the following:

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get dist-upgrade 

Pleas note, that driver is NOT updated for Ubuntu 14.04 yet.

I had the same problem. Pulseaudio was not running at startup because my home directory was owned by root. I changed the owner and the sound came back.