Regression sound not working with Dell XPS 9560 in Ubuntu 24.10

[Kwinz]

With the Dell XPS 15 9560 sound output:

reliably works with Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS
and reliably doesn't work with Ubuntu 24.10.

Only thing that is detected on Ubuntu 24.10 is the dummy sound output.
Tested with the live CD for both versions. No further debugging was done.

So there has been a regression that broke the sound for this hardware between 24.04.1 and 24.10

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Libera.chat.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/2090500/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Kwinz (ldm)]

<email address hidden>:~$ pacmd
No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as session daemon.

<email address hidden>:~$ aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav
Playing WAVE '/usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 48000 Hz, Mono

Note: no audio playing

<email address hidden>:~$ amixer
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 65536
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 65536 [100%] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 65536 [100%] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
  Capabilities: cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Capture 0 - 65536
  Front Left: Capture 65536 [100%] [on]
  Front Right: Capture 65536 [100%] [on]

<email address hidden>:~$ sudo aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 1: hdaudioB0D0 [hdaudioB0D0], device 1: HDAudio Analog (*) []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: hdaudioB0D2 [hdaudioB0D2], device 1: HDMI1 (*) []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: hdaudioB0D2 [hdaudioB0D2], device 2: HDMI2 (*) []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: hdaudioB0D2 [hdaudioB0D2], device 3: HDMI3 (*) []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

<email address hidden>:~$ lspci -v | grep -A7 -i "audio"
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation CM238 HD Audio Controller (rev 31) (prog-if 80)
 Subsystem: Dell Device 07be
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 32, IRQ 160, IOMMU group 13
 Memory at edd28000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
 Memory at edd00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: snd_soc_avs
 Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel, snd_soc_avs

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

Please execute the following command only once, as it will automatically gather debugging information, in a terminal:

apport-collect 2090500

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport by using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

(The issue may also relate to the 6.11 kernel & not pipewire at all; eg. I'd have selected a 6.8 kernel if available at grub (ie. kernel from 24.04) and see if it worked there with your existing pipewire settings.. if that worked it's a kernel issue; and this bug report is likely misfiled. I'd personally do this testing BEFORE running apport-collect; as the apport-collect command will gain details for the package listed only)

Bug reporting is about finding & fixing problems thus preventing future users from hitting the same bug.

I suspect a Support site would be more appropriate, eg. https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu. You can also find help with your problem in the support forum of your local Ubuntu community http://loco.ubuntu.com/ or asking at https://askubuntu.com or https://ubuntuforums.org, or for more support options please look at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/community-support/709

[Kwinz (ldm)]

Thanks for the reply! I selected pipewire because the bot suggested that I select a project, I don't have detailed knowledge of the current Ubuntu audio stack. And the https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshooting site still suggests running Pulseaudio commands so it seems outdated. I guess it's for you guys to figure out which package is the problem exactly. I haven't tried different kernels either, I didn't even do an install of Ubuntu I just booted the included kernel on the live DVD images. I suspected there was a high chance that this was already a known issue with the pulseaudio deprecation so I didn't want to spend too much time to collect additional debugging information.

Moreover to be frank I can count on 0 fingers how often during the last nearly 20 years of me making bug reports on Ubuntu Launchpad a bug report of mine has actually resulted in Ubuntu staff or Ubuntu project volunteers fixing a bug so I don't think it's appropriate to keep spending too much time on this. Maybe if I have more time I can boot Ubuntu again to run that apport-collect.

The bug is easily reproducible with just booting the live DVD images. If you need more information hopefully you or somebody else can get that information. I think I did my part by reporting the regression. Hope this was still helpful! Cheers.