Soundcard stopped working after USB-speakers were used a couple of times, how to trouble shoot?

Question

I have a Laptop with an internal audio digital stereo (IEC958) soundcard which used to work fine. After plugging in a pair of USB notebook-speakers, something got mixed up and the internal soundcard won't play anymore, it's still working if I boot a different Linux installation but I can't get it to work in my current install.

I would love to provide more information but don't know how to describe this peculiar problem more in detail other than that capture still works but replay is gone (also headphones won't produce any output).

Any ideas on how to trouble-shoot / reactivate the soundcard without having to reinstall? I'm on Kubuntu 10.10.

Answer 1

Is your sound device still recognized by your computer? If you can find it with your system, reinstalling the sound driver may help. If you are unable to detect it with your system, it's a hardware issue.

Answer 2

Run pavucontrol and make sure that your sound card is selected as the output device for both the system and any applications in question.