A small but annoying bug in Ubuntu causes the sound volume to be unmuted and reset to 100% after a reboot or logout.
This can be fixed by editing the /etc/pulse/default.pa configuration file for PulseAudio:
gksu gedit /etc/pulse/default.pa
Then look for these lines:
### Automatically restore the volume of streams and devices
load-module module-device-restore
load-module module-stream-restore
load-module module-card-restore
and comment out the first one:
### Automatically restore the volume of streams and devices
#load-module module-device-restore
load-module module-stream-restore
load-module module-card-restore
Save, logout or reboot and you're set.