HP Pavilion dv3-2155mx sound fix

Upgrade to ALSA 1.0.20

1. Upgrading ALSA needs compiling so the first thing we need to do is install the necessary tools to compile along with the kernel headers. Open a terminal and paste the following 2 commands:

sudo apt-get -y install build-essential ncurses-dev gettext xmlto
sudo apt-get -y install linux-headers-`uname -r`

2. Use the terminal to navigate to your home folder and download the ALSA files:

cd ~
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/driver/alsa-driver-1.0.20.tar.bz2
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/lib/alsa-lib-1.0.20.tar.bz2
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/utils/alsa-utils-1.0.20.tar.bz2

3. Creating the necessary folders and unpack the downloaded ALSA packages. Open a terminal and paste the following commands:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/src/alsa
cd /usr/src/alsa
sudo cp ~/alsa* .

and then, to unpack:

sudo tar xjf alsa-driver*
sudo tar xjf alsa-lib*
sudo tar xjf alsa-utils*

4. Now we can start compiling each component:


a) alsa-driver:

cd alsa-driver*
sudo ./configure
sudo make
sudo make install

b) alsa-lib:

cd ../alsa-lib*
sudo ./configure
sudo make
sudo make install

c) alsa-utils:

cd ../alsa-utils*
sudo ./configure
sudo make
sudo make install

5. Now you may want to removed the downloaded ALSA files, as they are not needed anymore:

rm -f ~/alsa-driver*
rm -f ~/alsa-lib*
rm -f ~/alsa-utils*

That's it! You now need to restart your computer and after doing so, your computer should have ALSA 1.0.20 installed. Again, you can verify this by running the following command in a terminal:

cat /proc/asound/version

Also, you may want to change your sound settings to Alsa ( System –> Preferences -> Sound, change auto detect to ALSA)

Source: http://www.webupd8.org/2009/08/how-to-upgrade-to-alsa-1020-on-ubuntu.html