Linux Mint Sound - how to fix sound settings?

Question

linux

Hello.
Mint has been running for a year and a half, the sound problems started a couple of months ago.
The problem is that formally there is sound. But his mode of operation seemed to be broken.
First of all, only " HDA Intel PCH " (serial number 0) remained in the Output Devices list.

card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC269VB Analog [ALC269VB Analog]

Also, the ability to adjust the audio channels of individual applications has disappeared.
The sound now clicks - when switching applications, opening / closing tabs, starting videos and music.

1. Reinstalled alsa and alsa-utils, enabled/disabled mute in alsamixer.
2. Set 0 to /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save .
3. In the /usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/intel-audio-powersave file, I replaced the line
INTEL_AUDIO_POWERSAVE=${INTEL_AUDIO_POWERSAVE:-true}
with the following:
INTEL_AUDIO_POWERSAVE=false
4. In the /etc/modprobe.d/ file alsa-base.conf wrote the line " options snd-hda-intel power_save=0 power_save_controller=N model=auto "
Did sudo alsa force-reload, rebooted.
The problem is different.

Help, please, who faced it, or tell me where to dig. There are a lot of tips in the manuals, of which 90% are devoted to the complete absence of sound or reinstalling alsa, the remaining 10% of the manuals are devoted to editing configs, but there are too many options for problems, and it was not possible to dig out the essence of your problem among them.

Answer 1

The problem was at the PulseAudio level.
Reinstalled PulseAudio - partially fixed.
- Clicking stopped
- There are more familiar interfaces in the soundbar

Answer 2

Oh, damn it, I recently came across just the fact that I don’t know shit about how the sound subsystem works in linux. The computer is at work, the sound is rarely needed, so I usually don't care if it exists or not. But it's just not clear to me what to do when it is not there, although it seems that nothing has been done, but before it was.
xfce4. When you start Clementine or SMplayer, the sound should seem to be - but it is not there, while let's say the Clementine indicators show that it is playing something.
And I don’t even know how to test his work!