Pulseaudio fails to detect card (probably due to hybrid graphics)

[Paul Konecny]

Hi,
I wanted to install Trusty on my Elitebook 850 G1 with hybrid graphics (Intel / AMD) but pulseaudio goes nuts on me as soon as I try to play any music / sound, try to change volume, etc.
I've tried it with Ubuntu, Kubuntu and now with Xubuntu with the same result everytime.

My guess is that pulseaudio has problems with the AMD GPU and it's sound processor being switched off automatically as enabled by Kernel 3.13 (formerly achieved by adding the radeon.runpm=1 kernel parameter)
(http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-September/045650.html)

root@HP-EliteBook-850-G1:~# cat /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
0:IGD:+:Pwr:0000:00:02.0
1:DIS: :DynOff:0000:03:00.0
2:DIS-Audio: :Off:0000:03:00.1

As you can see, the AMD GPU has been turned off automatically. Pulseaudio, the (X)Ubuntu volume applet and KMix on the other hand list it as still available.
Based on that I asume pulseaudio tries to access a switched-off device and fails.

I've followed the steps listed
here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingSoundProblems
and
here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio/Log

I'll attach the logs right away. (pulseverbose1.log and my dmesg output)

Pusleverbose is full of messages like this one:
( 0.013| 0.000) I: [pulseaudio] alsa-util.c: Error opening PCM device hw:0: No such file or directory

This output of dmesg also caught my attention:
[ 354.927935] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 357.695010] hda-intel 0000:03:00.1: Disabling via VGA-switcheroo

One thing I noticed using Kubuntu is that after pulseaudio becomes unresponsive the taskmanager lists 4 pulseaudio processes two of which are "active on harddrive" ("Aktiv auf Festplatte"). Those two processes cannot be killed even as root.
Currently being on Xubuntu the same thing is true, although it lists only one process in the taskmanager that cannot be killed.

I hope you can help me.

Best regards,
Paul

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: pulseaudio 1:4.0-0ubuntu11
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-24.46-generic 3.13.9
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-24-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse: Error: command ['fuser', '-v', '/dev/snd/by-path', '/dev/snd/controlC2', '/dev/snd/hwC2D0', '/dev/snd/pcmC2D3p', '/dev/snd/pcmC2D7p', '/dev/snd/controlC1', '/dev/snd/hwC1D0', '/dev/snd/pcmC1D0c', '/dev/snd/pcmC1D0p', '/dev/snd/pcmC1D2c', '/dev/snd/controlC0', '/dev/snd/hwC0D0', '/dev/snd/pcmC0D3p', '/dev/snd/pcmC0D7p', '/dev/snd/pcmC0D8p', '/dev/snd/seq', '/dev/snd/timer'] failed with exit code 1:
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Sun Apr 20 13:47:09 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-04-20 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140416.2)
PulseList: Error: command ['pacmd', 'list'] failed with exit code 1: No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as session daemon.
SourcePackage: pulseaudio
Symptom: audio
Symptom_Card: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH
Symptom_Jack: Speaker, Internal
Title: [HP EliteBook 850 G1, IDT 92HD91BXX, Speaker, Internal] Pulseaudio fails to detect card
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 02/19/2014
dmi.bios.vendor: Hewlett-Packard
dmi.bios.version: L71 Ver. 01.08
dmi.board.name: 198F
dmi.board.vendor: Hewlett-Packard
dmi.board.version: KBC Version 15.54
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: CNU345BY96
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: Hewlett-Packard
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnHewlett-Packard:bvrL71Ver.01.08:bd02/19/2014:svnHewlett-Packard:pnHPEliteBook850G1:pvrA3008CC10003:rvnHewlett-Packard:rn198F:rvrKBCVersion15.54:cvnHewlett-Packard:ct10:cvr:
dmi.product.name: HP EliteBook 850 G1
dmi.product.version: A3008CC10003
dmi.sys.vendor: Hewlett-Packard

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

And this is my dmesg output

[Raymond (superquad-vortex2)]

529246] hda-intel 0000:03:00.1: Enabling via VGA-switcheroo
[ 352.529379] snd_hda_intel 0000:03:00.1: irq 72 for MSI/MSI-X
[ 352.531951] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 352.531981] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 352.828668] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 352.828686] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 353.128570] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 353.128588] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 353.428508] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 353.428526] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 353.728318] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 353.728335] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 354.028292] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 354.028310] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 354.328184] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 354.328203] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 354.628070] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 354.628106] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 354.927895] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 354.927935] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
[ 357.695010] hda-intel 0000:03:00.1: Disabling via VGA-switcheroo
[ 358.231483] [drm] Disabling audio 0 support
[ 358.231492] [drm] Disabling audio 1 support
[ 358.231496] [drm] Disabling audio 2 support
[ 358.231499] [drm] Disabling audio 3 support
[ 358.231502] [drm] Disabling audio 4 support
[ 358.231505] [drm] Disabling audio 5 support

[Raymond (superquad-vortex2)]

post output of

xrandr --verbose

pactl list

pactl stat

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

xrandr --verbose:

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

pactl list:

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

pactl stat:

And thank you Raymond for the quick response!

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

According to this commit, 3.13 also enabled radeon audio by default:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-November/048316.html

Could that be of use?

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

By the way: KMix listed the regular Intel Analog Sound (onboard connected to the speakers and headphone jack)
as well as two HDMI devices one Intel and one AMD.
I believe the AMD one was even labled as DisplayPort Audio, which makes sense, because my laptop only has VGA and DP 1.2 outputs but no native HDMI output.
And according to http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/
DP Audio is still makred as TODO.

BTW: based on the description and error messages of this Bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/1309488
I believe we could be facing the same problem there.
Frank even has very similar hardware to mine (HP Elitebook with Intel and AMD GPUs) and asuming that his problems also started with the upgrade to trusty I think we're on to something.

[Raymond (superquad-vortex2)]

eDP1 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (0x6e) normal (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm

 EDID:
  00ffffffffffff000daec21500000000
  04170104952213780246359e57579427
  14505400000001010101010101010101
  010101010101b43b804a713834405a3c
  690058c21000001acd27804a71383440
  5a3c690058c21000001a000000000000
  00000000000000000000000000000002
  000c33ff0f3c96211433960000000070

do your CMN monitor support more than two speakers ?

CMN Model 15c2
Made week 4 of 2013

DisplayPort interface

   8.259472] [drm] Radeon Display Connectors
[ 8.259474] [drm] Connector 0:
[ 8.259475] [drm] DP-3
[ 8.259476] [drm] HPD1
[ 8.259478] [drm] DDC: 0x6530 0x6530 0x6534 0x6534 0x6538 0x6538 0x653c 0x653c
[ 8.259479] [drm] Encoders:
[ 8.259480] [drm] DFP1: INTERNAL_UNIPHY
[ 8.259481] [drm] Connector 1:
[ 8.259483] [drm] DP-4
[ 8.259483] [drm] HPD2
[ 8.259485] [drm] DDC: 0x6540 0x6540 0x6544 0x6544 0x6548 0x6548 0x654c 0x654c
[ 8.259486] [drm] Encoders:
[ 8.259487] [drm] DFP2: INTERNAL_UNIPHY
[ 8.265290] [drm] Internal thermal controller without fan control
[ 8.265377] [drm] probing gen 2 caps for device 8086:9c18 = 5323c42/0
[ 9.821797] [drm] radeon: dpm initialized

your haswell support 8 channel LPCM, HBR and need to know your HDMI monitor speaker setup

Node 0x05 [Pin Complex] wcaps 0x40778d: 8-Channels Digital Amp-Out CP
  Control: name="HDMI/DP,pcm=3 Jack", index=0, device=0
  Control: name="IEC958 Playback Con Mask", index=0, device=0
  Control: name="IEC958 Playback Pro Mask", index=0, device=0
  Control: name="IEC958 Playback Default", index=0, device=0
  Control: name="IEC958 Playback Switch", index=0, device=0
  Control: name="ELD", index=0, device=3
  Amp-Out caps: ofs=0x00, nsteps=0x00, stepsize=0x00, mute=1
  Amp-Out vals: [0x00 0x00]
  Pincap 0x0b000094: OUT Detect HBR HDMI DP
  Pin Default 0x18560010: [Jack] Digital Out at Int HDMI

but do your radeon really need speaker allocation for playing stereo ?

Node 0x03 [Pin Complex] wcaps 0x400381: Stereo Digital
  Control: name="HDMI/DP,pcm=3 Jack", index=0, device=0
  Control: name="IEC958 Playback Con Mask", index=0, device=0
  Control: name="IEC958 Playback Pro Mask", index=0, device=0
  Control: name="IEC958 Playback Default", index=0, device=0
  Control: name="IEC958 Playback Switch", index=0, device=0
  Control: name="ELD", index=0, device=3
  Pincap 0x00000094: OUT Detect HDMI

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

Okay, that's strange, because i have no external monitor connected to my computer. Just the built-in screen.

I only wanted to watch a youtube video. As there was no sound i opened the volume manager to find that the default output device was the radeon HDMI but changing it to the "Intel Stereo HDA" or even changing the volume on the radeon HDMI results in the crash / hang / error described above.

On Xfce the volume sliders disappear immediately and I get the error "Can't connect to PulseAudio:OK"

Doing so on KDE hangs the entire desktop as dolphin / KDE Frameworks tries to access a PCM device on each start.
After a while (5 Min.) dolphin opened and a popup says that the Intel sound chip cannot be accessed and it switches to "Default Device" whatever that may be.

I'm pretty sure it has something to do with Kernel 3.13 enabling radeon audio by default as i had no problems with the daily builds under Kernel 3.12 and the radeon.runpm=1 parameter. As the problem appeared on daily builds I thought that it was no big deal and I should wait for the stable release.

Purging pulseaudio and setting a default alsa device for firefox (as described here http://www.seehuhn.de/pages/alsa) sort of worked but is obviously not the preferred solution.

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

Booting with radeon.audio=0 doesn't help either. The card is still detected.

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

Could this BIOS option have something to do with it?
It says "Advanced display functions of the hybrid graphics"

Should I try to install from scratch without this option enabled?

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

I tried it with the aforementioned BIOS option on and off with no luck.
The problem also occurs on Arch Linux with the latest updates applied (Kernel 3.14)

Best regards
Paul

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

TEMPORARY WORKAROUND (Worked for a short time)

I was trying to blacklist the module for the sound card on the GPU by blocking the module listed in
/proc/asound/modules. Unfortunately all of the cards even the radeon sound card listed snd-hda-intel as their driver so blacklisting was no option as it would have killed all my sound.

Fortunately an employee at my university found a workaround:

He used this chain of commands to tell ALSA not to use the radeon audio device

cat << EOF > /etc/modprobe.d/my-alsa.conf
options snd-hda-intel index=1,2,3 vid=0x8086,0x8086,0x1002 pid=0x9c20,0x9c32,0xaab0
alias snd-sound-slot-2 off
EOF

(or create a file named /etc/modprobe.d/my-alsa.conf and add the towo lines in the middle)

Sound slot off deactivates the third card (counting starts at 0 therefore slot 2).
You can get the index of your sound cards by executing LANG=C aplay -l which looks like this for me:

root@HP-EliteBook-850-G1:~# LANG=C aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 1: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  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
card 2: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: 92HD91BXX Analog [92HD91BXX Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 3: HDMI_1 [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 3: HDMI_1 [HDA ATI HDMI], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

It lists my radeon audio device as card3

After that he told me that the init ram disk has to be rebuilt which he did by executing this command.
update-initramfs -k all -u

After a reboot my sound works flawlessly now.
As it stands the bug is not fixed but can be avoided this way. The downside is, that I have no hdmi audio because of that.

EDIT: During me writing this message the sound stopped working again. I have no idea why.

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

EDIT:
After rebuilding my initramfs a second time the workaround mentioned above works again.

Cheers!

[Carlos Gomes (cmalvesgomes)]

I found the simplest workaround: switching off the HDMI sound card in pavucontrol.

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

I tried doing that but even though pulseaudio set this cards profile to off it did not recover. Even a reboot after using pavucontrol did not work.
According to my saviour at university pulse recognizes the switching from one sound card to the other but it can't handle the switch internally.

So pavucontrol could not solve my problem. I believe the problem lies a little deeper than the pulse level as disabling the card on the ALSA level worked.

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

UPDATE:

After reinstalling on a larger SSD the fix mentioned above does not work anymore. On the other hand installing fglrx deactivates the card properly but using fglrx gives me unbearable tearing if using the radeon so this is not an ideal solution.

Btw. will this bug be escalated upstream as it affects not only ubuntu but "vanilla" packages as well? Or should I post it to the pulseaudio bugzilla myself?

Best regards

[Dominik Schrempf (dominik-schrempf)]

Hello,

I had exactly the same problem on an HP Elite Book 840. The solution from above did not work for me though. I have found a somewhat cleaner solution though:

- Check the cards of your snd_hda_intel driver
cat /proc/asound/cards

- Deactivate the HDMI cards that are shown above, e.g., with
options snd-hda-intel enable=0,1,0

Voila.

The downside: no HDMI sound.

Best wishes.

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

Hello Dominik,

I'll try that right away and report back as soon as I can.

I would have one additional request though:

As this is just a workaround and not an actual solution for this bug could you click "This bug also affects me" to raise the bug heat? So that this bug might get escalated upstream to fix it for good.

Thanks!

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

Hello Dominik,
your solution works like a charm!

Thank you!

[Raymond (superquad-vortex2)]

 audio: auto
  supported: force-dvi, off, auto, on

xrandr can disable HDMI audio

[David Henningsson (diwic)]

If the radeon driver is the problem and the intel one works, then just disabling the radeon hdmi card would be a better workaround, i e, in your case:

options snd-hda-intel enable=1,1,0

Vga-switcheroo cards are quite unusual so I don't have much experience with those. Does the above work for you (as long as you keep the radeon GPU disabled)?

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

options snd-hda-intel enable=1,1,0

Re-enabled the Intel HDMI Device without breaking my speaker output however it does not bring back the actual HDMI Audio signal as that seems to be internally wired to the Radeon. I get a video signal through however so I don't quite know what's going on.

In addition my Notebook doesn't have a native HDMI port, only one DisplayPort output if that means anything.
And as stated above this feature matrix lists DP Audio as TODO http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/ so I don't know if this might be the root of the problem.

I believe it has something to do with the GPU being deactivated without ALSA being aware of that. Should I file a bugreport for the radeon driver or should I contact one of the AMD developers via mail/irc to ask them to have a look at the existing one?

"Vga-switcheroo cards are quite unusual"
Well actually they are not as unusual as most hybrid laptops use this mechanism unless the NVIDIA / AMD blobs are installed.
Installing fglrx solves the problem but gives me a very unpleasant experience (tearing, no seamless switching, etc...) So I would prefer to continue using the mesa drivers if possible.

@Raymond:
Could you give me the full xrandr command to try out? I'm not very experienced with xrandr with the exception of "--listproviders" and "--setprovideroffloadsink radeon Intel"

Thanks, both of you!

[Letik (martin-96-59)]

Still same problem with ArcLinux ! https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=187542
The fix worked !

[R. Becke (subscribe-becke)]

Is there already a sustainable fix for this issue?
I have the same problem on my "HP EliteBook 840 G1".
I'm running "ubuntu-14.04.1-desktop-amd64".
Every time when I open the System Settings my computer respective my mouse freezes for 1-2 seconds.
And when I try to play a video with totem player then after 10-20 seconds the sound disappears and VLC does not play any sound but complains: "Audio output failed: The audio device "default" could not be used. Connection refused."
In my kern.log - I get the following logs (similar log entries I get in "syslog"):
...
Oct 9 11:17:03 becke-ch--hp-elitebook-840-g1--s0-v1 kernel: [ 5000.174743] [drm] ib test on ring 5 succeeded
Oct 9 11:17:05 becke-ch--hp-elitebook-840-g1--s0-v1 kernel: [ 5001.777850] hda-intel 0000:03:00.1: Enabling via VGA-switcheroo
Oct 9 11:17:05 becke-ch--hp-elitebook-840-g1--s0-v1 kernel: [ 5001.777984] snd_hda_intel 0000:03:00.1: irq 65 for MSI/MSI-X
Oct 9 11:17:05 becke-ch--hp-elitebook-840-g1--s0-v1 kernel: [ 5001.780541] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
...
Oct 9 11:17:10 becke-ch--hp-elitebook-840-g1--s0-v1 kernel: [ 5006.875866] HDMI ATI/AMD: no speaker allocation for ELD
Oct 9 11:17:10 becke-ch--hp-elitebook-840-g1--s0-v1 kernel: [ 5007.023742] hda-intel 0000:03:00.1: Disabling via VGA-switcheroo
Oct 9 11:17:10 becke-ch--hp-elitebook-840-g1--s0-v1 kernel: [ 5007.055720] hda-intel 0000:03:00.1: Cannot lock devices!
Oct 9 11:17:11 becke-ch--hp-elitebook-840-g1--s0-v1 kernel: [ 5007.472387] [drm] Disabling audio 0 support
Oct 9 11:17:11 becke-ch--hp-elitebook-840-g1--s0-v1 kernel: [ 5007.472394] [drm] Disabling audio 1 support
...

As described above appended the following entry:
...
options snd-hda-intel enable=0,1,0
...
at the end of the existing file "/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf"

This works for now but I wonder whether this is the final solution to this problem.

[Vicente Luiz Scalon (vscalon)]

Suggestion on post #27 by Letik (martin-96-59) incluning the :

options snd-hda-intel enable=0,1,0

on file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf works for me too.

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

I believe our problem has been fixed upstream.
I switched to Antergos / Arch Linux and am running following Stack:
Kernel 3.18
Mesa 10.4
Everything else latest upstream.

This is my dmesg now:

[ 3047.121620] [drm] probing gen 2 caps for device 8086:9c18 = 5323c42/0
[ 3047.121625] [drm] PCIE gen 2 link speeds already enabled
[ 3047.125725] [drm] PCIE GART of 1024M enabled (table at 0x0000000000277000).
[ 3047.125814] radeon 0000:03:00.0: WB enabled
[ 3047.125815] radeon 0000:03:00.0: fence driver on ring 0 use gpu addr 0x0000000040000c00 and cpu addr 0xffff88042b591c00
[ 3047.125817] radeon 0000:03:00.0: fence driver on ring 1 use gpu addr 0x0000000040000c04 and cpu addr 0xffff88042b591c04
[ 3047.125818] radeon 0000:03:00.0: fence driver on ring 2 use gpu addr 0x0000000040000c08 and cpu addr 0xffff88042b591c08
[ 3047.125819] radeon 0000:03:00.0: fence driver on ring 3 use gpu addr 0x0000000040000c0c and cpu addr 0xffff88042b591c0c
[ 3047.125820] radeon 0000:03:00.0: fence driver on ring 4 use gpu addr 0x0000000040000c10 and cpu addr 0xffff88042b591c10
[ 3047.127354] radeon 0000:03:00.0: fence driver on ring 5 use gpu addr 0x0000000000075a18 and cpu addr 0xffffc90024835a18
[ 3047.319897] [drm] ring test on 0 succeeded in 1 usecs
[ 3047.319903] [drm] ring test on 1 succeeded in 1 usecs
[ 3047.319907] [drm] ring test on 2 succeeded in 1 usecs
[ 3047.319915] [drm] ring test on 3 succeeded in 4 usecs
[ 3047.319921] [drm] ring test on 4 succeeded in 4 usecs
[ 3047.496968] [drm] ring test on 5 succeeded in 2 usecs
[ 3047.496975] [drm] UVD initialized successfully.
[ 3047.497007] [drm] ib test on ring 0 succeeded in 0 usecs
[ 3047.497035] [drm] ib test on ring 1 succeeded in 0 usecs
[ 3047.497062] [drm] ib test on ring 2 succeeded in 0 usecs
[ 3047.497088] [drm] ib test on ring 3 succeeded in 0 usecs
[ 3047.497113] [drm] ib test on ring 4 succeeded in 0 usecs
[ 3048.144956] [drm] ib test on ring 5 succeeded
[ 3048.153812] snd_hda_intel 0000:03:00.1: Enabling via VGA-switcheroo
[ 3048.153941] snd_hda_intel 0000:03:00.1: irq 52 for MSI/MSI-X
[ 3053.296495] snd_hda_intel 0000:03:00.1: Disabling via VGA-switcheroo

The last three entries seem to indicate that this bug has now been fixed. At least I did not have to create a modprobe.d file.

Cheers!

[Paul Konecny (paul-konecny)]

I just tried a 15.04 daily and I still get
[ 1013.617302] snd_hda_intel 0000:03:00.1: Enabling via VGA-switcheroo
[ 1018.648871] snd_hda_intel 0000:03:00.1: Disabling via VGA-switcheroo
[ 1018.680852] snd_hda_intel 0000:03:00.1: Cannot lock devices!
Is there any difference in the Arch and Ubuntu Kernel that you guys know of, that could cause this "Cannot lock devices"?

Although:
Strangely sound seems to be unaffected this time.
I enabled the pcspkr driver in modprobe because when I blacklisted it on arch I ran into the same issue.
So maybe enabling the beep in the driver would help?

Another difference in Arch is, that the AMD card although enabled, does not show up in the the available master channels in the Pulseaudio setting. Further testing revealed that the HDMI / DP Audio is not wired to the AMD sound chip. So disabling it via modprobe with 1,1,0 should leave the Intel DP output running for HDMI audio. (You just have to switch vlc to another audio device).

I hope this helps.
Cheers!

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for alsa-driver (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]