Audio keeps failing (software issue) on X200

[tpprynn]

This doesn't actually seem to be a Linux-specific issue although maybe the way the Linux driver was reverse-engineered explains why it's occuring with Windows 8 and Linux Mint.

Sound keeps dying temporarily and I don't think it's a hardware thing. I have restarted sound by running a live CD and rebooting. I've used Mint CDs for this. It may be that on a couple of occasions I turned the sound down using the buttons by the ThinkVantage button and that the audio failed then, I don't know. Both speaker and headphones stop working. I mostly use headphones and if I'm wrong and it's hardware I could accept a failed speaker but a dead audio chip would be a nuisance - I imagine it's soldered in.

It seems to be a software/drivers thing though. The X200's Windows 8 drivers aren't all up to it yet if they're ever going to be although I'm feeling otherwise settled with Linux Mint 16 KDE 64 bit at the moment.

I was hoping when the audio stopped in Mint this morning that I'd just be able to open alsamixer and solve things that way but I still needed a live cd and a reboot. It just seems like the audio goes to sleep and the refreshed settings of alive cd wake it up.

If the issue is the chip, I'm wondering if this kind of thing will be a deent replacement if I've understood what it's for:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-2-0-Audio ... 5d46de1adb

Any ideas about all this, if I'm making sense? Is it familiar?

[tpprynn]

I'm attempting to sort of bump this as it's still proving a puzzle.

I bought a usb audio dongle similar ot the one linked previously. When I got home today the sound had gone again, seemingly at random. I plugged the audio device in, slected it in alsamixer and the sound came back - but out of the speakers! for some reason there was no headphone sound and no slider for them in alsamixer.

It shows the strange nature of this issue, which to recap was occuring in Windows 8 too. The audio just seems to go to sleep and presumably isn't a physical fault if it can be woken up as above.

At least I know now that if I keep this tiny dongle where it can be found there will be less faffing hen the osund goes again, but I would like to know what the problem is.

I remember some fairly recent editions of Ubuntu prior to adding updates you'd have a problem whereby something would be missing from the panel. Some startup routines had failed. Maybe it's something like this, but three or four reboots earlier today, restarts and shutdowns, didn't help.

Thanks.