Dell XPS 17 (Ubuntu 21.04) - No sound AT ALL upon fresh installation

[Arkady Titenko]

New laptop - Dell XPS 17, bought in 2020. Upon installation of Ubuntu 21.04 sound does not work at all. System settings only show one audio output - "Dummy output". Audio input does not have even that, just an empty drop-down list.

Issue can be fixed if we load a custom sound driver as described here: https://blog.fts.scot/2020/07/04/dell-xps-2020-how-to-get-audio-working-on-linux/

That poses a security risk however and according to the author of the article is not necessary since mainline Kernel release 5.11 now has required device headers included.

...

lspci output:

user@MYPC:~$ lspci -v | grep -i -A 10 audio
00:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH cAVS
 Subsystem: Dell Comet Lake PCH cAVS
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 229, IOMMU group 16
 Memory at 609b218000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
 Memory at 609b100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: sof-audio-pci
 Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel, snd_sof_pci
--
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation TU106 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
 Subsystem: Dell TU106 High Definition Audio Controller
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17, IOMMU group 1
 Memory at 73000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
 Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel

Looked around for soundwire drivers, found this:

user@MYPC:~$ lsmod | grep soundwire
soundwire_intel 40960 2 snd_sof_intel_hda_common,snd_intel_dspcfg
soundwire_generic_allocation 16384 1 soundwire_intel
soundwire_cadence 32768 1 soundwire_intel
soundwire_bus 77824 7 regmap_sdw,soundwire_intel,snd_soc_rt715,soundwire_generic_allocation,soundwire_cadence,snd_soc_rt711,snd_soc_rt1308_sdw
snd_soc_core 294912 8 soundwire_intel,snd_sof,snd_sof_intel_hda_common,snd_soc_rt715,snd_soc_hdac_hda,snd_soc_rt711,snd_soc_dmic,snd_soc_rt1308_sdw
snd_pcm 118784 14 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,soundwire_intel,snd_sof,snd_sof_intel_hda_common,snd_sof_intel_ipc,snd_soc_rt715,snd_compress,snd_soc_core,snd_soc_rt711,snd_soc_rt1308_sdw,snd_hda_core,snd_pcm_dmaengine

Maybe using the soundwire_intel driver would fix the problem? Need to keep digging. Will post an update if I have any progress.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 21.04
Package: alsa-base 1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.11.0-16.17-generic 5.11.12
Uname: Linux 5.11.0-16-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu65
Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: iamarkadyt 1593 F.... pulseaudio
CasperMD5CheckResult: pass
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Fri Apr 23 00:18:15 2021
InstallationDate: Installed on 2021-04-23 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 21.04 "Hirsute Hippo" - Release amd64 (20210420)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: alsa-driver
Symptom: audio
Symptom_AlsaPlaybackTest: ALSA playback test through plughw:NVidia failed
Symptom_Card: TU106 High Definition Audio Controller - HDA NVidia
Symptom_DevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: iamarkadyt 1593 F.... pulseaudio
Symptom_Type: No sound at all
Title: [HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia, playback] No sound at all
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 09/03/2020
dmi.bios.release: 1.4
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 1.4.0
dmi.board.name: 0YK6XT
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A00
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr1.4.0:bd09/03/2020:br1.4:svnDellInc.:pnXPS179700:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0YK6XT:rvrA00:cvnDellInc.:ct10:cvr:
dmi.product.family: XPS
dmi.product.name: XPS 17 9700
dmi.product.sku: 098F
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.

[edurenye (edurenye)]

This also happens in Ubuntu 21.04 installed from scratch and with Kernel 5.11.0-16-generic, so this issue is not fixed by updating the kernel to 5.11.

[Eduard (jongeduard)]

Hi,

For about at least two months now, I have found the reason, and also how to solve it. And that is no other than compiling the kernel by yourself, while applying a change in the configuration.

See:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=976791

These settings need to be enabled before build (the first one makes the second one visible):
CONFIG_SND_SOC_INTEL_USER_FRIENDLY_LONG_NAMES=y
CONFIG_SND_SOC_INTEL_SOUNDWIRE_SOF_MACH=m

Here follows is how to do it whith the NCurses interface that you get with the kernel source for Ubuntu:
Device Drivers --->
 <M> Sound card support --->
  <M> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture --->
   <M> ALSA for SoC audio support --->
    -*- Intel Machine drivers --->
     [*] Use more user friendly long card names
     <M> SoundWire generic machine driver

For now I won't go into more detail, but this is wat needs to be done and what Canonical/Ubuntu should have done by themselves!
Ubuntu is the only distro which I know that has this setting still disabled.

SoundWire works out of the box with Arch Linux, with Fedora, with Debian, but not with Ubuntu (why doing these things different from Debian?).

So please Canonical/Ubuntu correct it! Thanks!

[Hui Wang (hui.wang)]

We already handled it in another bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1921632

[Hui Wang (hui.wang)]

Hi, the proposed kernel is ready, you could install the kernel of 5.11.0-19 to verify, this kernel merged the fix of this bug.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1921632/comments/28