some things to check: Enshure the sound is not muted with alsamixer or alsamixer -c [card-number (find out which with: aplay -l )] (TAB more options, ESC quit, M un/mute) what's the output of: lsmod | egrep "^snd_usb|^snd_pcm|^soundcore" have you selected the right output in qjackctl