Sound to speakers

[bicario]

I'm running Ubuntu Studio 23.04 and have been testing out a few of the audio production apps. I've tried Audacity, Muse, and Qtractor. I popped the same .wav file in each app and even though it shows that there is output on the db monitor, nothing comes out of the speakers. In the Audio settings of the laptop, the speakers are selected as the output device. I imagine that I have missed a setting somewhere, but am learning these apps, so I don't know where to look.

Suggestions?

Thanks

[mandofrog]

I'm a noob slowly figuring out how to start actually doing stuff on Ubuntu Studio 22.40 LTS. I'm still scratching my head over Alsa and Jack, and have sore fists from pounding the table trying to get sound to come out of - well anything.

When I initially connected my USB interface (M-Audio Fast Trak Ultra - "FTU"), the system recognized it and seemed to configure everything with little fuss. I ran across QasMixer somewhere and it had sliders to control everything on the FTU. Audio was coming from a mic, through the interface into my DAW (Reaper), and sound would play from the DAW or a media player through monitors and headphones plugged into the interface. Fantastic... Until the FTU was NOT connected and the system would not make any sound at all. From Reaper, VLC, Elisa, YouTube, system sounds, nada, zip, silence. Internal speakers and headphone jack were dead. I scratched my head for days over Alsa/Jack/Pulse, and couldn't get a sound.

Finally I remembered QasMixer. Opened it up and the FTU controls were missing (duh, because it was not connected?), and the laptop's internal speaker and headphone jack sliders were at zero, even though the laptop's volume control was at 80%. I slid speaker and headphone sliders up in QasMixer and VOILÁ! Sound!

Somewhere I ran across a setting for simultaneous sound through multiple paths (USB, internal speakers and headphone jack simultaneously??), but I don't remember where that setting was.