No Sound in Thunderbird (Linux)

[ronjnk]

Hello Forum. I have a recent new install to Linux MX 21. I've been able to get music etc to play. It took awhile but I got system sounds to work. But I cannot get thunderbird sounds to work. I run thunderbird in the background and have always relied on a sound file to alert me to new incoming emails. I've used thunderbird for at least 17 years with no sound issues.

I found a wav. file that has a duration of maybe 10 seconds. Enough time to go to pulse audio and see that it seems to be playing on Cannon PCH cAVS HDMI2 Output but I get no sound from my speaker. I have no choice in the drop down menu. HDMI2 Output (plugged in) is the only item on the menu.

Yes, I have my volume up on my speakers. I can play system sounds or music file. Has anybody else seen this odd problem? Cannon Lake is something I've never seen before. A search on this forum and internet hasn't offered any clues to help me. MX21 forum is stumped. Thanks for any ideas. Sure would like to have sound notifications working.

[Grumpus]

Under Settings/General/Config Editor - Look for media.eme.enabled default is false, try true.
Also look for other .eme settings. Make sure you take notes to change back if needed.

[ronjnk]

Thank you very much @Grumpus for the reply and suggestion. I'm unable to find that in my MX21. I will pose your response on the MX forum to see where the location is.

I am using XFCE desktop. I can find settings. There is settings manager and settings editor. Neither have a "General" tab. I did a catfish search for media.eme.enabled which quickly came back with nothing.

I'll let you know how I made out. Thanks.

[ronjnk]

@Grumpus Thank you very much for your help. I never would have figured to look in thunderbird. Neither of those suggestions worked but I have it working only by dumb luck.

I do not understand what pulse audio is doing. I go to the "Output Devices" tab and I see 4 channels. The second channel is clearly doing something when I play a sound in thunderbird but nothing comes out of the speaker. By chance, I went to channel 4 which is the only channel where the drop down menu gives me a choice between headphones and speaker.

Logically I had it on speaker since generally I use speakers and rarely headphones. As soon as I told the channel to use headphones, the sound blared out the speakers. Doesn't make any sense but I don't care. It works now. Maybe a glitch?

Thanks again for your feedback. Stay safe!

[Grumpus]

Do you have either the mail tool bar or the menu bar visible.
If the menu bar is not visible hit the alt key and it should show, briefly, go directly to view and check the menu bar and mail bar.
The mail bar has a three line icon and in the list is settings, this should not be confused with the account settings for each mail account.
The General tab along with several others should appear.
Be careful if you have definite settings for several mail account you could, in error cause them to all change to a global setting.
Scroll down the general tab to the config editor, and enter .eme into the search area.
Good Luck.

[ronjnk]

Hi again Grumpus. Just to close this thread out, I was able to go into the settings and found the .eme and changed the values as you suggested. Changing the values did nothing to get sound to work. But as I noted above, just by dumb luck, I got sound to play when I went to pulse audio and changed the sound setting from to speaker to headphones which doesn't make a bit of sense. So I have pulse audio on headphones which makes my email notification come out the speakers. It works so I'm happy. I wish you the best. Thanks again for taking time with me.