Linux® For Dummies®, 8th Edition

What Sound? I Don’t Hear a Thing!

First, check and make sure that your speakers or headphones are hooked up correctly. You wouldn’t be the first person to be unaware that the cat pulled the connectors out of their sockets.

Next, it’s possible that your audio settings got turned down to zero, or muted. Right-click the volume icon in the upper left of your desktop, and select Open Volume Control (Figure 13-1).

Figure 13-1. The Fedora Volume Control.

When this control is open, it helps to understand the terms you’re about to see:

✓	Master: The main volume control corresponds to the volume slider on your desktop.
✓	PCM: Controls the volume for audio files stored on your computer.
✓	Line-in: Controls the volume for sound coming in through your sound card’s line-in socket.
✓	CD: Controls the volume for sound coming in through your CD and/or DVD player.
✓	Microphone: Controls the volume for sound coming in through your sound card’s microphone connector.

Now that you know what you’re looking at in this dialog box, look for one of these two major clues as to what might be wrong:

✓

Are any of the items you see muted? You can tell by looking for red X’s on top of the volume icon underneath each section. In Figure 13-1, for example, Line-in and Microphone are both muted. Is the one you see muted responsible for your problem? For example, if you had headphones hooked up to your Line-in jack and Line-in ...