Tips are welcome: sound only on display port

I have a really old PC ( Dell XPS 630i ) and i managed to access it via Vinagre out of my XFCE-stable Manjaro.

What i don’t get working is sound except out of Display port on my monitor. Strange thing: the main soundcard Soundblaster XFI work perfect in my Windows XP also on this old DEll XPS.

But here first inxi -F from Dell XPS:

john1@XPS:~$ inxi -F
System:    Host: XPS Kernel: 5.4.0-126-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Cinnamon 5.2.7 Distro: Linux Mint 20.3 Una 
Machine:   Type: Desktop System: Dell product: XPS 630i v: N/A serial: <superuser/root required> 
           Mobo: Dell model: 0PP150 v: A00 serial: <superuser/root required> BIOS: Dell v: 1.0.8 date: 07/15/2008 
CPU:       Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core2 Duo E8500 bits: 64 type: MCP L2 cache: 6144 KiB 
           Speed: 2000 MHz min/max: 2106/3335 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2000 2: 2000 
Graphics:  Device-1: NVIDIA GF104 [GeForce GTX 460] driver: nvidia v: 390.154 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 driver: nvidia tty: N/A 
           OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GTX 460/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 390.154 
Audio:     Device-1: NVIDIA GF104 High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Device-2: Creative Labs EMU20k1 [Sound Blaster X-Fi Series] driver: snd_ctxfi 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.0-126-generic 
Network:   Device-1: NVIDIA MCP51 Ethernet type: network bridge driver: forcedeth 
           IF: enp0s20 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: 00:1e:c9:51:d0:45 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 931.52 GiB used: 196.53 GiB (21.1%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Hitachi model: HDP725050GLA360 size: 465.76 GiB 
           ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Hitachi model: HDP725050GLA360 size: 465.76 GiB 
RAID:      Hardware-1: NVIDIA MCP51 Serial ATA Controller driver: sata_nv 
           Hardware-2: NVIDIA MCP51 Serial ATA Controller driver: sata_nv 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 95.90 GiB used: 14.89 GiB (15.5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdb7 
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 3.91 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sdb5 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 50.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 33 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: nvidia fan: 40% 
Info:      Processes: 218 Uptime: 47m Memory: 3.84 GiB used: 1.63 GiB (42.4%) Shell: bash inxi: 3.0.38 

Dell XPS journalctl -b

https://dpaste.com//BGPAM3F9Z

Picture of Display Port:

https://i.imgur.com/hffIYqw.png

I tried also a bunch of Linux live Distros with same issue: only display port sound is working:

What really puzzles me: SoundBlaster hardware is ok ( see above Windows XP ) but no linux can handle it ( see all tested Live DVD: Manjaro, ubuntu, Debian, Knoppix … )

I’m really interested whats going on here: for me there’s no logic!

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture

It’s installed and i think also all live-Distros have it

john1@XPS:~$ dpkg -l|grep -i alsa
ii  alsa-base                                    1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu5                all          ALSA driver configuration files
ii  alsa-topology-conf                           1.2.2-1                             all          ALSA topology configuration files
ii  alsa-ucm-conf                                1.2.2-1ubuntu0.13                   all          ALSA Use Case Manager configuration files
ii  alsa-utils                                   1.2.2-1ubuntu2.1                    amd64        Utilities for configuring and using ALSA
ii  gstreamer1.0-alsa:amd64                      1.16.3-0ubuntu1.1                   amd64        GStreamer plugin for ALSA
ii  libasound2:amd64                             1.2.2-2.1ubuntu2.5                  amd64        shared library for ALSA applications
ii  libasound2-data                              1.2.2-2.1ubuntu2.5                  all          Configuration files and profiles for ALSA drivers
ii  libasound2-plugins:amd64                     1.2.2-1ubuntu1                      amd64        ALSA library additional plugins
ii  libatopology2:amd64                          1.2.2-2.1ubuntu2.5                  amd64        shared library for handling ALSA topology definitions
ii  libsox-fmt-alsa:amd64                        14.4.2+git20190427-2                amd64        SoX alsa format I/O library
ii  linux-sound-base                             1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu5                all          base package for ALSA and OSS sound systems

But you are right, there is a lot more to read … tomorrow :slight_smile: