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No sound on XPS13 with Ubuntu 14.04.1
I refrained from posting this here before I tried all the sensible tips I found on the web, but since I haven't found a solution yet, here is the problem. I recently did a fresh Ubuntu 14.04 on my XPS13 and at some point realised the sound was not working. More specifically, the system was not showing any audio device in the settings menu, although lspci -nn | grep -i audio showed
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller [8086:1e20] (rev 04)
Having installed apps such as VLC and Skype, which may have tampered with the audio configuration, I reinstalled the OS and did the following:
- upgraded to kernel 3.18
- reinstalled alsa-base
- blacklisted snd-hda-codec-hdmi
Following that I see an 'HDMI/Display port (Built-in audio)' output device, but no capture interface and still no sound. Tried adding
options snd-hda-intel model=generic
and then
options snd_hda_intel index=0 model=auto vid=8086 pid=1e20
to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf but still no change.
alsamixer shows a S/PDIF item (and no capture interface) as follows
Card: HDA Intel PCH
Chip: Intel ID 2806
The ALSA drivers loaded are: snd-seq-midi snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd-hda-codec-generic snd-hda-intel snd-hda-controller snd-hda-codec snd-hwdep snd-pcm snd-timer
I see no analog driver there nor a specific codec being loaded, which I'd suspect may be the root causes of this problem.
Any help would be much appreciated.
DELL-Jared D
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Posted December 10th, 2014 09:00
Sound should definitely work then. What was running on it when sound last worked?
DELL-Jared D
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Posted December 10th, 2014 09:00
Which version of the XPS 13 is this? And did you buy it with Ubuntu on it?
DELL-Jared D
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Posted December 11th, 2014 17:00
Yes, please do. Sorry, I had passed your information along internally to see if anyone had any thoughts on this but haven't heard back from anyone. I would recommend opening an official support ticket. Please let us know how it goes. I'll keep an eye out for further information about this.
What does ``aplay -l`` show? On my system I see the following
```
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC3661 Analog [ALC3661 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0```
As you can see card 0 and device 0 is my analogue device.
If you don't see your device there you could also try running the ALSA debug info script (www.alsa-project.org/.../Help_To_Debug) and try speaking to the ALSA developers on their mailing list.
Should note that because you're using Ubuntu you will be using PulseAudio which may complicate things.
That's something I'd expect as well, but I only see
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: ID 2806 Digital [ID 2806 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0The ALSA debug info is located here http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=be4fe7871804a1972e1ef896247e82334f370f65
Indeed, I have pulseaudio installed and I am aware that may complicate things. Tempted to even try Windows on a new partition, to see rule out any HW issue....
Hmm I just noticed your hardware is a little different from mine. I have XPS13 9333 whereas yours in the XPS L322X.
Rather than doing the very painful and (probably) time wasting Windows install why not just try a Linux live CD/USB?
For example I use Arch Linux which has a live CD/USB image that is quite bleeding edge. You could boot of that to test how your sound card appears (without PulseAudio). You'll probably need to install some of the alsa packages to run ``aplay`` when you first boot.
aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav
The Arch Linux wiki page on ALSA is very helpful.
ppatras
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Posted December 10th, 2014 09:00
Last time sound worked, the notebook was running the Ubuntu 12.04 version that was shipped with it by Dell (likely with a newer kernel though). I tried booting a live Sputnik image yesterday (http://hwe.ubuntu.com/uds-q/dellxps/amd64/sputnik-precise-amd64.iso