Not sure if this will work for you, but it does for me.
Basically, the device initializes into a muted state, so you need to
unmute it pretty forcibly.
Here are my notes showing various ways to accomplish this.
This is with my device numbering, yours might be different.
You can just run "alsamixer" with no arguments to see all the alsa
audio devices, and see if one is muted, and if so unmute it, and if
not mute/unmute it just to be sure.
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Unmute device:
$ alsamixer -c 0
- switch to "Master" device
- press "m" to unmute it so that you see "00" instead of "MM" under
- up arrow key to increase the volume to 100%
Store setting across boot:
$ sudo alsactl store