Problem with pulseaudio at startup (it doesn't start)

Solution 1:

For me, on Ubuntu 20.04, the solution was as easy as doing:

systemctl --user enable pulseaudio

followed by:

systemctl --user start pulseaudio

(this will fail, obviously, if you started pulseaudio manually via pulseaudio --start, so in this case to try the user unit simply issue a pulseaudio --kill followed by the above)

Last but not least you can do systemctl --user status pulseaudio to see what the current status is (but typically you see that in the status icon for volume controls).

None of those commands require superuser access. Tested and verified on Ubuntu 20.04 with KDE (not Kubuntu!).

For additional troubleshooting advice I warmly recommend having a look into the Arch Wiki.

Please be aware that the potential alternative:

systemctl --user disable pulseaudio.socket

... did not work for me at all.

Solution 2:

try maybe using:

killall pulseaudio 

And try Again with:

pulseaudio --start

If it started up, But has some weird static effect, then try Doing either:

killall pulseaudio

OR

pulseaudio -k && sudo alsa force-reload && sleep 2 && pulseaudio -k && sudo alsa force-reload