Wednesday, July 5th, 2006

USB Audio / Speakers with Ubuntu Linux


I have a pair of Labtec USB speakers that I paid quite a bit for back in the day. They sound great even with a basic laptop sound card. You will find that they do not work at first plugin with Ubuntu 6.06. The problem is that Ubuntu sets up all its audio setting tools and audio players to just use a single sound card – switching to USB is difficult.

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Here’s how to do it. First, test your USB speakers. Ubuntu has USB sound compiled in by default (or as a module – didn’t check). Just type at a command prompt: “cat /bin/bash > /dev/dsp” and you should hear sound from your speakers. If not try /dev/dsp1. To stop the ear piercing sound, just type Cntrl+C.

Now that you know they’re working, install xmms – a new audio player. This player gives you much more control over your audio playback. In the preferences tab, take a look at the Output Plug-in that’s configured for ALSA. Click the Configure button and set your audio device to the USB speaker set.

Fire up an MP3 and you should be up and running.

Posted by md on July 5th, 2006 | Filed in Linux, Technology, Ubuntu | 16 Comments »


16 Responses to “USB Audio / Speakers with Ubuntu Linux”

  1. August 23rd, 2007 at 11:20 am

    Anton said:

    Thanks! This pointed me in the right direction. However I used “cat /bin/bash > /dev/audio2″ to find my audio device and VLC to control audio playback.

  2. August 23rd, 2007 at 11:51 am

    md said:

    Yes, there are probably a few ways to get this working. I’ve found audio to be quite an annoying mess, but I guess we get what we get ;-)

  3. November 21st, 2007 at 3:39 am

    elvis dumont said:

    great, works well, thanks!

  4. December 25th, 2007 at 10:16 pm

    B Butcher said:

    Thankyou. This was quite an irritating problem particularly with VLC. This article was VERY helpful. I now use the OSS device “/dev/dsp1″ to handle the audio in VLC.

  5. February 26th, 2008 at 12:17 am

    Linux User said:

    Thats great for music but my VLC media player won’t play the sound. Do you know of any programs that will play movie files and work with usb audio.

  6. February 27th, 2008 at 10:00 am

    md said:

    actually, with the newest release of Ubuntu, all programs are working just fine for me with USB audio – I think you may have a different problem… this post was from back in 2006 but the issues have since been fixed.

  7. December 28th, 2008 at 4:21 pm

    Michael Wigle said:

    I have encountered an odd problem which I attribute to not knowing what I’m doing. Maybe someone here can help. I have Logitech USB powered speakers connected to a Dell Inspiron with Ubuntu 8.04. They work find in RhythmBox and other audio applications but I can get the sound to direct to the USB speakers in LinDVD. Is there another DVD player I could use that will use the USB speakers? Or, better yet, is there a setting I’m missing for doing it with LinDVD?

  8. January 10th, 2009 at 11:37 am

    Private Citizen said:

    FYI I use Kaffeine as my main media player for DVD playback, .avi, and especially I like the “open url” feature for streaming media radio and “tv” urls from world sources.

  9. February 14th, 2009 at 2:56 pm

    Pipps said:

    When I enter the code ‘cat /bin/bash > /dev/dsp’ into the terminal, the noise plays out of my laptop’s system speakers, and not the USB speakers which are attached. What is wrong with my system?

  10. February 19th, 2009 at 12:43 am

    Danilo said:

    to pipps:

    try cat /bin/bash > /dev/dsp1

  11. March 20th, 2009 at 12:19 pm

    andy said:

    I succeed to play music by XMMS2 in Ubuntu through the USB speaker but could not play in the real player.
    Earphone works for the latter.

    Besides, I could not configure to USB speaker in XMMS2…

    Difficult Linux!

  12. March 24th, 2009 at 10:33 pm

    michael said:

    Okay guys, I got a problems I am trying tofix my friends laptop and I did some tricky stuff and now it is not working….any sound that is, is there a better version of linux other than ubuntu 8.04? I really like how the wireless works on this.

  13. March 25th, 2009 at 1:41 pm

    SaRa said:

    I am still having difficulty even after going thru all the prompts. i am using unbuntu 8.0 and trying to hook up logitech usb speakers. When I went to the terminal and put in “cat /bin/bash > /dev/dsp” – it was working, but i cant seem to get xmms2 to open and configure. If anyone has any idea please let me know- I am at wits end, and about to not even use the usb speakers.

  14. April 21st, 2009 at 3:07 pm

    Jon Finch said:

    Thanks very much for this – it worked!

    I used /dev/dsp1 and Audacious audio player (which is based on XMMS)

  15. May 19th, 2009 at 12:44 am

    Raja said:

    HI,
    I m new to ubuntu. i successfully made the usb audio jack work for vlc. but its not working for firefox or any other browsers. sound is heard through system speakers and not through usb audio.,

  16. September 8th, 2009 at 3:31 am

    Erik said:

    Try this in your terminal

    asoundconf set-default-card 1

    Then either reset or close and re-open your browser.



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