FWIW, I determined that, at least in my case, this was manifesting in conjunction with usage of VirtualBox or VMWare. When I have a VM open in one user, sound becomes inaccessible to the other user(s). However (generally) if I log both users in without opening a VM, sound remains available to both users. It seems that some programs are using PulseAudio in such a way that it is blocking the other user from having sound.
Some notes on usage: if both users are logged in and have sound, and one starts a VM, the other user will lose sound. However, once the VM is closed, the sound will be restored. If, however, one user logs in and opens a VM, and then the other user logs in, they won't show any sound device, and even if the other user closes the VM they will still not have sound unless they log out and back in. I tried the different audio options in VirtualBox (alsa, pulseaudio, etc), and it didn't seem to matter, they all exhibited this behavior. So...hopefully that helps. I could see someone looking at this and saying it's not an audio problem, it's a VirtualBox/VMWare issue, but I disagree. The audio should not be so susceptible to 3rd party applications borking it. -- [Karmic] Only one user has sound; no hw shows in Sound Preferences https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/433654 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
