I have been trying to figure out how to get the subwoofers in my Dell XPS 9510 to work. I have been doing a bit of research, and I am now at a point where I don’t really know what to do.
This is the same issue reported in No bass on Dell XPS 9510, which I believe was resolved with a quirk introduced in the kernel that enables the bass speakers in this computer (see the fix. This, however, did not work for my setup.
I’m looking for some help trying to find the root of the problem and fix it, hopefully someone here can point me to what to try or where to ask What I’ve tried and what I know about the issue in my machine so far is the following:
I am running Manjaro Gnome with kernel 5.15.7. I was originally using PulseAudio, but moved to PipeWire after someone suggested that might fix some issues, and used since without any noticeable changes.
Playing this video on firefox shows me that no sound is played below roughly ~150Hz, while I can hear already 40Hz on Windows.
Running aplay, I am able to play and hear frequencies above ~150Hz, I have a file playing a 100Hz tone and one on 250Hz that I am using to test. I did this to try to discard a failure from PipeWire, and now I’m almost sure the issues are with alsa, although I’m not 100% sure, because I don’t really know if aplay is directly talking with alsa or is going through PipeWire.
I have tried different combinations of connected pins with hdajackretask, but nothing really worked, the best result (if any) was always with the default configuration.
In sound settings, I can select stereo or surround 4.0 for the internal speakers. Both options give the same results. When running alsamixer, I can see a mute option for the ‘bass speaker’, but it does not have a volume bar attached. Also muting/unmuting it does not change anything.
I have also opened a bug in bugzilla for alsa, but the amount of work alsa developers must be always doing, I wouldn’t expect to get any responses any time soon.
The last clue I had was that the other day I noticed the subwoofers stopping to work when the laptop went on power-saving mode when the battery dropped below 10%. I had not noticed this before, and it makes me think that the issue might be related to some
Does someone have an idea of what could I try, or where should I ask, to continue debugging this and hopefully find a solution?
create directory ~/.config/pipewire and copy the default config file there sudo cp /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf
moved to PipeWire after someone suggested that might fix some issues
PipeWire (and most PipeWire users) cannot fix an issue with audio hardware or drivers in ALSA
If you can see the ALSA control for Bass Speaker the kernel patch must be partially working at least
I found a recent Linux hardware scan that shows the Bass Speaker only has a pswitch control and no pvolume control. The Bass speaker level is probably set to the same level as the Speaker pvolume
Simple mixer control 'Speaker',0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 87
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 87 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
Front Right: Playback 87 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Bass Speaker',0
Capabilities: pswitch
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Mono:
Front Left: Playback [on]
Front Right: Playback [on]
If you cannot hear low frequency audio I would suspect that the audio codec is filtering audio
for the woofer but something is muted/disconnected after the crossover filter
I suggest you get full ALSA diagnostic data
sudo alsa-info.sh --no-upload
Check there are no traces of any previous unsuccessful fixes (e.g. jack retasking; modprobe options or asound.conf files). Then upload the data as an attachment to the Bugzilla report. The ALSA developers would not read a report that has no actionable data
Thank you for the suggestion, I tried this, but unfortunately, I didn’t see any changes.
I’m also not sure what would this configuration do to the setup.
Reading the wiki, the mix-lfe option seems to be targeted to devices without subwoofer, and adding the lfe-cutoff would mute frequencies below 80Hz, which I are the ones I’m trying to make appear haha I need that groovy bass man!
I was curious to see if upmixing would give any different result, but after thinking about it, for pipewire this should be a simple stereo device, so upmixing should not be necessary, right?
Let me know if I’m not getting it, I tried to dig through the pipewire documentation before to see if any option needed enabling and tried a couple of configurations, but so far no luck. I’m a real noob here, but I’m trying to get to know a little, so any insight is very welcome!
If you can see the ALSA control for Bass Speaker the kernel patch must be partially working at least
This is what I suspect too. I tried to see if some configuration was cutting frequencies in software (that was where I was suspecting PipeWire or PulseAudio), however, it seems more and more to be indeed a driver issue.
Then upload the data as an attachment to the Bugzilla report.
I just uploaded a new alsa-info report, hopefully they will have time to have a look into it some time soon, thanks for the suggestion
If you cannot hear low frequency audio I would suspect that the audio codec is filtering audio
for the woofer but something is muted/disconnected after the crossover filter
I am curious about this. I have been suspecting that something might be switched off due to some power saving setting, but I cannot find a good way to test it. I tried disabling power_save for snd_hda_intel, but no luck with that either. Do you have an idea of other power switches that are around and I could try out?
Another thing that I didn’t test yet is playing with verb configurations, however, I don’t really know how to find out what they are or which values I can play with.
Thank you for your help and the nice welcome to the forum!
I hope I can slowly figure out how to fix this!
What I’ve tried and what I know about the issue in my machine so far is the following: