Comment 0 for bug 1654448

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Andrew McLeod (admcleod) wrote : XPS 13 9360, Realtek ALC3246, Headphone audio hiss

Pertaining to 16.04 on a dell XPS 13 9360

ii alsa-base 1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu5

Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version k4.4.0-57-generic.

When headphones are plugged in, there is a clearly audible hiss (white noise). This is present as soon as the headphones are plugged in, whether 'headphones' or 'headset' are selected from the pop-up box.

Using alsamixer to debug the issue reveals that it is related to "Headphone Mic Boost" - the default setting is: dB gain 0.00, 0.00. If this is changed to:

10.00, 10.00 (one notch up) the hiss disappears.
20.00, 20.00 cause a louder hiss and
30.00, 30.00 causes an even louder hiss with high frequency audio artifacts.

When the headphones are removed and plugged back in the Headphone Mic Boost setting returns to dB gain 0 and the problem also returns.

This (problem and workaround) has been reported in the wild: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13050843 and https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/4j1zz4/headphones_have_static_noise_with_ubuntu_1604_on/ for example