Can not get Intel HDA sound to work

Q&A
1

Hello, I am brand new to clearlinux and using brand new intel hardware (intel i7 NUC 10th gen comet lake) and am having a difficult time getting my sound card to work.

I have VLC and ffmpeg “ffplay” both working playing music and video files (VLC doesn’t play videos that ffplay can play and ffplay has a slow stuttering effect when playing 4k hevc videos but 1440p 60fps play clear and perfectly)… no sound for either vlc or ffplay.

Also no sound at all for Firefox as well as problems with videos not playing on reddit, but everything works properly with Youtube playing 4k 60fps 2160p videos perfectly (with no sound but crystal clear picture).

And no sound for gnome->settings->sound speaker test, and I get a strange “pop” from the speakers when messing with the settings of pavucontrol… also when I play a file like the gnome speaker test the pavucontrol looks like it has sound playing but no actual sound is palyed.

I have been reading posts on this forum as well as trying different things from the Arch wiki and Gentoo wiki as well as some things from some Ubuntu wikis.

My soundcards are always shown when using commands like lspci and other commands.

Using the command ‘pacmd list-sink-inputs’ while playing VLC and ffplay I am able to see both applications sinked and recognized with name and bin, as well as 100% volume and not muted… but I can not get any sound.

When messing around with pavucontrol and alsamixer, as well as gnome sound I can get a “pop” from my speakers that are plugged into the headphone jack of my intelNUC10.

I tried to use hdajackretask and did not know what to do. Any settings that I tried to apply caused an error:
tee: /sys/class/sound/hwCOD2/reconfig:Device or resource busy

I tried adding an /etc/modprobe.d directory with these files in it:

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf with:
blacklist snd_soc_skl

and a /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf with:
options snd-hda-intel model=headset-mic

and a /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf with:
options snd-hda-intel model=auto
options snd-hda-intel dmic_detect=0

No luck so far.

I thought of trying to uninstall pulseaudio but they are both part of the desktop bundles. I also added some gsteamer bundles and other sound related bundles to get some commnad line tools.

I’m sure there is an easy fix to this that I am unaware of.

Any help will be appreciated. Thank you.

2

I just checked out my intel hda problems on a manjaro live install environment and had the same issues. Then tried a NixOS live install and also had no sound working.

So I’m pretty sure this is a new 10th gen comet lake issue that will be fixed soon… so I will just hang out and wait patiently since everything else is working nicely.

If anybody has any ideas for a workaround I’ll give it a try.

Also, every time I boot into a distro my speakers do a loud “pop” sound. Same thing happened when using the manjaro live environment when I used this command:

sudo rmmod snd-hda-intel -f; sudo modprobe snd-hda-intel

I can’t use that command on clearlinux because “Resource temporarily unavailable”.

3

Hi, Did you tried Ubuntu 20.04, Kubuntu 20.04 and Pop Os 20.04. All I have tested on the hardware you mentioned and they worked smoothly. No sound issue with speakers and mic. On Manjaro I was able to fix issue but clear linux, I guess still missing alsa latest firmware.

4
5

I have not tried another distro other than the live installs of NixOS and Manajaro. I might try Ubuntu just to see if it works. If it does work with Ubuntu then I can just reinstall clearlinux at a latter time (I like how fast and solid this distro feels).

That HP SPECTRE that you have looks like an awesome laptop… with better graphics than my intel NUC10 i7-10710U.

6

Hello, I have found out that I am not the only intelNUC10i7 owner that has had these issues. This is one of the many threads that I found about the NUC 10i7 sound issues: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/getting-the-audio-jack-to-work-on-a-intel-nuc-10i7fnh-4175668348/

After trying many of these steps in these different threads I have found that my problem isn’t with the hdmi sound but rather the headphone jack on the front panel of the NUC10.

I also own an older NUC5i7 that has run archlinux perfectly for 5 years and when using F6 in alsamixer in the terminal it has 2 different options to select, one is the intel hda sound and the other is an analog setting.

The analog setting is the one that is used for the headphone jack on the front of the NUC5 and is the missing option when using alsamixer on the NUC10.

I own a cheap pair of Bose computer speakers that plug in using the headphone jack. When messing around with settings I could only get a “pop” sound from the speakers… and the same sound is made when booting up any disto. When using the command below I am able to make a loud continuous static sound from both my Bose speakers:

cat /dev/urandom | aplay -D hw:0,0 -f S16_LE -c 2

When trying the NUC10 on every linux distro that I have used (clearlinux, manjaro, NixOS, and ubuntu 20.04.1), none of them have the analog setting found when clicking F6 in alsamixer, and the same thing with the sound settings for both KDE and Gnome desktops settings.

But I have discovered that the hdmi sound does work through the headphone jack that is located on my Dell monitor (that uses display port/thunderbolt port).

The threads that I have found also say that sound through usb soundcard will work, and I assume sound through bluetooth or wifi will also work.

I wish I had realized that I had a headphone jack on the back of my Dell monitor much sooner cause the sound is working perfectly now.