PC speaker beep command sound won't work in 24.04, works fine in 20.04

Support & Help Requests
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I have several bash scripts that use the PC speaker beep command. When I did a fresh install of 24.04, the pc speaker will no longer beep. I have already removed the blacklist of the pc_spkr in modprobe.conf, and the beep command looks like it runs, but I don't hear a beep. I have opened alsamixer and made sure that all the outputs are enabled and at their highest level.

I don't want to use system sounds, or any of the myriad of system sound "work-arounds" that others have posted. I just want the pc speaker to beep using the BEEP command like it has for years before version 24.04.

Does ANYONE have any idea how to make this work again? I have two machines that the exact same thing has happened to since "upgrading" to 24.04. If I can't get these beeps to work, I will have to go back to 20.04.

Thanks in advance,
Paul

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.... one thing I did notice, is if I have an endless loop running the beep command, and then I initiate some sound through the sound card, like playing a wav file or a movie, the pc speaker will beep while that other media is playing and for a few seconds after the other media stops playing sound as if the sound card is unmuting something during the playback of the video/sound media.

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.... another thing I have noticed, these two computers are laptops, specifically Lenovo Thinkpads and the "beep" sound seems to have always come from the speakers and not an internal beeper, and as stated above, there seems to be some kind of mute enabled... if I play a system sound, the mute goes off during the playback and I can here the beep command during the period that the sound is unmuted.

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Welcome, @Paul_Stafford to the community!

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Thank you!

.... I notice that the beep sound works as long as I am running the pavucontrol application... when I close that app, the beep stops working a couple seconds later.... as if something is muting the sound card.

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I have focused in on pulseaudio as being the culprit and I have a hack work around.

I found that if I run these commands, the speaker beep will work until I reboot the computer:

amixer -D pulse set Master Playback Switch on
spd-say "Pulse Audio Fixed"

I have to run the spd-say program with any text for it to "enable" the speaker beep.

If anyone knows how I can make this fix stick without having to run those commands I would greatly appreciate it.

Paul

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Ubuntu MATE switched from using Pulse Audio to PipeWire in 22.10, so rather than PulseAudio being the culprit, I wonder if it's a consequence of the shift to PipeWire, and no-one noticed speaker beeps in testing because so few people use it.

PipeWire

PulseAudio has been replaced with PipeWire and Bluetooth audio codec support has been expanded with the addition of AAC, LDAC, aptX and aptX HD.

Sorry I have no answers for you. Well done for a work around (but I suspect you're tweaking audio settings & not directly pulse audio)

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