No sound on Debian unstable even with kernel 4.1-rc5

Question

Hello!

I finally got my XPS-13 a few days ago which I have now set up to use dual-boot with Windows 10 and Debian unstable. I have got everything got up and running so far, but I still can't get the sound card to work. The snd_hda_intel driver simply doesn't detect any codecs:

glaubitz@ikarus:~$ dmesg |grep snd
[ 3.917458] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:03.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[ 3.917611] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[ 3.921025] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: no codecs found!
[ 4.134102] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:03.0: bound 0000:00:02.0 (ops i915_audio_component_bind_ops [i915])
glaubitz@ikarus:~$

I have compiled my own 4.1-rc5 kernel to make sure I am using all the recent patches related to the Realtek codec used in this laptop. I also enabled SND_SOC_INTEL_BROADWELL_MACH and made sure SND_SOC_RT286 is enabled as well. I also downloaded the IntcSST2.bin and rebooted the laptop several times to be sure I am not running into the reboot issue which occurs when dual-booting with Windows.

As the laptop came with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS pre-installed where sound was working out-of-the-box, there is apparently a way to get the sound card working on the XPS-13 (2015), it needs apparently some tweaking and patching.

Could someone please enlighten me what exactly is needed to get the sound working on the XPS-13 (2015) with a current 4.0 or 4.1 kernel? Do I actually need the firmware? And how do I tell whether it's running in HDA or I2S mode.

Also, are there chances that the reboot issue with the sound card is resolved? The sound card also seems to stop working on Windows from time to time and usually this is fixed by rebooting the machine once or twice. It seems to be an issue that has to be addressed in another BIOS update.

Thanks,

Adrian

cmtptr · Answer

What happens when you try the following from a terminal?

$ aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

Also, what do you see in alsamixer? On Arch with kernel 4.0.4 I found that two devices show up: HDMI and PCH, and unfortunately HDMI appears to be the default. I was able to get audio output with the following (use `aplay -L` to list devices):

$ aplay -D sysdefault:PCH /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

Then, I made this the default with the following /etc/asound.conf one-liner:

pcm.!default sysdefault:PCH

Hope this helps. The speakers on this laptop are pretty nice!

DELL-Mario L · Answer

With 4.1-rc5 the audio should be in HDA mode. Are you cold booting at all? A warm-reboot will not toggle the modes. It has to be a full shutdown and turn back on from within Debian for it to initialize properly.

Also - same thing goes for coming back into Windows from Debian. Boot to Windows, do a full shutdown. Cold boot back to Windows. Should have audio again then.

In 4.2 or 4.3 (whenever I2S is mature) this behavior will no longer be necessary.

cbmuser · Answer

Hi there!

Sorry for not getting back to this discussion earlier, I was busy with work and other things.

Anyway, sound is working fine now. I simply didn't actually do a power-cycle which is necessary to reset the sound chip properly. I realized that when I turned off the laptop and next time I booted directly into Debian, sound worked immediately :). I talked to Jared from the Sputnik team and Matthew Garrett (the kernel guy) on IRC who gave me some background on the issue and why a power-cycle is necessary.

Thanks for all your input and feedback!

Cheers,

Adrian

Linux General

No sound on Debian unstable even with kernel 4.1-rc5

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