No bass on Dell XPS 9530

The sound over speaker is horrible and i dont know how to fix it. Over bluetooth its working find. Only 2 of the 4 speakers work (the subwoofer doesn’t work)

inxi -SMaz

System:
  Kernel: 6.5.5-1-MANJARO arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.2.1
    clocksource: tsc available: acpi_pm
    parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.5-x86_64
    root=UUID=7b963b00-a2a6-4e87-b512-1ffc311f1c5c rw
    btusb.enable_autosuspend=0 quiet splash
  Desktop: GNOME v: 44.5 tk: GTK v: 3.24.38 wm: gnome-shell dm: GDM v: 44.1
    Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Dell product: XPS 15 9530 v: N/A
    serial: <superuser required> Chassis: type: 10 serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Dell model: 0P6GXD v: A00 serial: <superuser required> UEFI: Dell
    v: 1.7.0 date: 08/14/2023

Hi @angioli, and welcome!

In order for us, or anyone for that matter, to be able to provide assistance, more information is necessary. To that end, please see:

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Hope you manage!


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:bangbang::bangbang: Additionally

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Please edit your post accordingly.

For reference: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=215233 & Reddit - Dive into anything
You are not the only one with this issue. These conversations might help you find a solution. Providing full system info could help narrow the issue down to a specific part and a user of the forum might be able to help.

Non-working bass speakers is a common issue for new Dell XPS laptops

There are previous discussions on here about issues with Dell XPS 9510. ALSA developers created a patch ALC289_FIXUP_DUAL_SPK for XPS 9510 and 9520 systems
But a recent bug report advises that this patch does not work for XPS 9530

217906 – Dell XPS 15 9530: subwoofer not working, and ACPI _DSD Properties…
On the Dell XPS 15 9530, the sound quality sounds bad compared to Windows, because the subwoofers aren’t working. On previous models (the 9510 and 9520), this was resolved by applying the dual speaker fixup

However, applying this patch on the 9530 reportedly doesn’t work. This seems to be because the 9530 has different audio hardware

I suggest you post a comment to that bug report to advise your system has the same issue
and add an attachment with more ALSA information

sudo alsa-info.sh --stdout > alsa-info.txt
1 Like

2 posts were split to a new topic: No sound on Dell XPS 15 9530

done… thanks

There are patches available via this issue, however I don’t believe they’ve made it upstream.

As a temporary workaround I believe it’d be relatively simple to adapt these patches in to the Manjaro core kernel source to build a custom kernel in the meantime. I believe the patches would need to be modified a bit to fit line wise in with some of the other recent Asus Rog patches - line diffs may be slight off. ref: Manjaro kernel 6.6

Update: I was able to get this working doing a custom kernel with the patches recommended and using the Manjaro kernel repo source against 6.6.6-2.

LKML: Linus Torvalds: Linux 6.7-rc5
From  Linus Torvalds
Date   Sun, 10 Dec 2023 14:53:05 -0800
Subject Linux 6.7-rc5

Aleksandrs Vinarskis (1):
  ALSA: hda/realtek: fix speakers on XPS 9530 (2023)

ALSA: hda/realtek: fix speakers on XPS 9530 (2023) - Patchwork
On Mon, 04 Dec 2023 00:30:06 +0100,
Aleksandrs Vinarskis wrote:

XPS 9530 has 2 tweeters and 2 subwoofers powered by CS35L41 amplifier, SPI
connected. For subwoofers to work, it requires both to enable amplifier
support, and to enable output to subwoofers via 0x17 quirk (similalry to
XPS 9510/9520).

Kernel 6.7.0rc5-1 released to unstable branch only at this time
packages.manjaro.org - linux67

1 Like

The last of the needed kernel patches to make Dell XPS 9530 audio work as designed won’t hit until the 6.9 kernel. What most of us do if desired is compile a custom kernel using 3.7.1 or higher. Those have everything needed with the exception of the kernel cirrus firmware and an Intel lpss patch, AlexV put together an awesome wiki here.

I use Manjaro often on my Dell XPS 9530 (ty very much btw), so what I do is:

  • Grab and put in place needed cirrus firmware. Another example gist here: Ex:
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/CirrusLogic/linux-firmware -b dell_fw
sudo cp -ri linux-firmware/cirrus/cs35l41/v6.80.0 /lib/firmware/cirrus/cs35l41
sudo cp -ri linux-firmware/cirrus/*10280beb* /lib/firmware/cirrus/
sudo ln -s /lib/firmware/cirrus/cs35l41/v6.80.0/halo_cspl_RAM_revB2_29.82.0.wmfw /lib/firmware/cirrus/cs35l41-dsp1-spk-cali-10280beb.wmfw
sudo ln -s /lib/firmware/cirrus/cs35l41/v6.80.0/halo_cspl_RAM_revB2_29.82.0.wmfw /lib/firmware/cirrus/cs35l41-dsp1-spk-prot-10280beb.wmfw
  • Clone/download latest Manjaro kernel linux67 kernel from the gitlab repo and add patch
# add: "mfd-intel-lpss-v4-backport.patch" to PKGBUILD
# run: updpkgsums
# make new kernel packages: makepkg -s
# install patched kernel: sudo pacman -U linux <blah-blah>.tar.zst
# reboot

This allows all four cirrus speakers to work. The optional pipewire EQ tweaks the sound to excellent quality:

wget https://gist.githubusercontent.com/DanShaders/c1e5c8d046fd9f8c193b6687a13ae7a3/raw/011da44b5026b6ec16ed4dc2dfdfff881901f6be/sink-eq6.conf

sudo cp sink-eq6.conf /etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/

Your mileage may vary. The snag is if you use nvidia driver for example, those have a communication layer that those modules will need to be compiled as well to match any custom kernel.

What would be incredibly awesome is if we could get this remaining mfd-intel-lpss-v4-backport.patch in to the core Manjaro linux67 repo in the interim, that would make all of this unnecessary except for the grabbing the needed firmware files :slight_smile:

cc /@philm