Speakers on Laptop not working, but headphones are

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
1

OS: Manjaro Gnome Edition. Kernel 3.16.1-1.

Sound: 00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller [8086:1c20] (rev 05)

I've been having issues with the speakers on my laptop working, while the headphones work all the time. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling pulseaudio, I've removed manjaro-pulse, I've installed alsamixer, gnome-alsamixer, pavucontrol, etc. etc. and all of them say that there is audio going to the speakers with it clearly isn't. In alsamixer and pavucoontrol both say that the speakers are unmuted, but no audio comes out. In fact I can watch the audio levels change in pavucoontrol while audio is playing and it isn't actually playing. Oh, and I also tried to do some manual alsa configuration as per the Arch wiki to make the speakers default, but that didn't seem to work either, maybe I did it wrong.

Originally audio used to play from the speakers, for what seemed to be random times, and would then cut-out even if alasmixer says that the thread isn't muted.

I think that that is at least all the information I can think of off the top of my head. I've spent a day or two trying to figure this out and I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall.

If any more information is needed to figure this out just let me know.

2

I forgot, I've tried this with kernels 310, 314, and 315 and the issue doesn't change.

3

Did you get any "missing firmware" messages at bootup relating to your audio chip?

4

Might be the speaker volume is turned down.

  1. Open up terminal and type alsamixer then enter
  2. Press F6
  3. Select HDA Intel (whatever one is in the middle)
  4. select speaker (using left and right arrow key)
  5. Turn speaker volume up

That should work. My volume has been screwy lately to. I need to find a fix to it

5

I've done this and it didn't change the situation. The volume can be at 100% and the speakers still won't be going.

6

I've noticed that when I install/update the kernel it listed some things might be missing, how could I (slow down the output/save it) so that I can go through it more thoroughly? I've wanted to save terminal output before but I've never done it successfully.

7

type "dmesg" in terminal, and it will give you a chronological overview of debug messages from the moment of power-on.

if you only want the firmware-related debug messages instead of scrolling through the whole thing, pipe it into a grep for "firmware".

then ddg.gg !g the mentioned missing firmwares, and look them up in the software repo.

8

I didn't find anything in the dmesg's when I piped a grep of firmware so I went through it manually and found the section where it found the audio sources. It looks like it found the headphone jack but not the speakers (although I could be wrong).

[ 2.607169] iTCO_wdt: Intel TCO WatchDog Timer Driver v1.11

[ 2.607217] iTCO_wdt: Found a Cougar Point TCO device (Version=2, TCOBASE=0x0460)

[ 2.607376] iTCO_wdt: initialized. heartbeat=30 sec (nowayout=0)

[ 2.608205] snd_hda_intel: unknown parameter 'vid' ignored

[ 2.608210] snd_hda_intel: unknown parameter 'pid' ignored

[ 2.608536] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: irq 51 for MSI/MSI-X

[ 2.623181] [drm] Memory usable by graphics device = 2048M

[ 2.623185] [drm] Replacing VGA console driver

[ 2.623190] checking generic (c0000000 500000) vs hw (c0000000 10000000)

[ 2.623192] fb: switching to inteldrmfb from VESA VGA

[ 2.623217] Console: switching to colour dummy device 80x25

[ 2.625675] sound hdaudioC0D0: CX20585: BIOS auto-probing.

[ 2.626129] sound hdaudioC0D0: autoconfig: line_outs=1 (0x1f/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0) type:speaker

[ 2.626132] sound hdaudioC0D0: speaker_outs=0 (0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)

[ 2.626134] sound hdaudioC0D0: hp_outs=1 (0x19/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)

[ 2.626135] sound hdaudioC0D0: mono: mono_out=0x0

[ 2.626137] sound hdaudioC0D0: inputs:

[ 2.626139] sound hdaudioC0D0: Mic=0x1b

[ 2.626141] sound hdaudioC0D0: Internal Mic=0x1a

[ 2.626961] sound hdaudioC0D0: Enable sync_write for stable communication

[ 2.627626] AVX version of gcm_enc/dec engaged.

[ 2.638504] input: HDA Digital PCBeep as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/hdaudioC0D0/input11

[ 2.638887] input: HDA Intel PCH Mic as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input12

[ 2.638984] input: HDA Intel PCH Headphone as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input13

[ 2.639077] input: HDA Intel PCH HDMI/DP,pcm=3 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input14

Also, I just tried playing some audio from a youtube video and it was mute for awhile and then all of a sudden it played for a few seconds and then cut-out. So the speakers exist I just can't figure out what is screwing up.

edit: it does indeed find the speaker, I just missed that bit, so I'm assuming that there is something along the way that is screwing up. One thing that was suggested on the ALSA wiki was that I might have the wrong firmware installed, but I don't know how to check if that's the case

9

Okay, I think I'm going to install the XFCE version of Manjaro on my laptop. We'll see if the audio there works fine (if it doesn't there is a guide for pulseaudio muting within the Manjaro wiki and replacing the pulse plugin with the XFCE audio manager). If I can get that to work I'm just going to install Gnome along side XFCE so that I can troubleshoot what is going on while still having something that can output to the speakers. I really like using Gnome so hopefully this will eventually get figured out.

This will also allow me to see if my sound problems are with ALSA or the hardware, or if this is issues with PA and Gnome.

I'll report back after I get this all done later tonight.

10

It may be the headphone jack itself ... you know the switch that turns off speakers when you plug in headphones ... may be stuck or ????

11

Well. I installed the xfce desktop version of Manjaro and still have the issues. I followed this guide to install the xfce4 audio mixer instead of having Pulse Audio and I still have issues. I'm assuming this is then a problem of my hardware or ALSA and I'm not quite sure how to debug ALSA. All my hardware is recognized and since some audio does come out of my speakers for a short time before muting I'm assuming that it works. I can pull my laptop apart and see if there is anything apparent with the headphone jack, as Ratzzz mentioned, but I don't think that's the problem since both Pulse Audion and the Xfce mixer mute the headphones when it says audio is going to the speakers (meaning I assume its already moving the audio to speakers, realizing that my headphones are not actually there i.e. there isn't a closed circuit in the headphone jack).

Any suggestions about figuring out issues with ALSA? Incorrect audio routing or such? All of these issues are my first foray into Linux audio so I guess its a good learning experience, but that doesn't take away from the fact that it's maddeningly annoying.

12

You could be right but it would not hurt to 

watch this ... warning looks difficult

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yNhspKirM4