Poor sound quality with onboard sound card - MSI H170A PC Mate

Hi,

I am running an up-to-date install of TW x86_64. I upgraded my old setup ( Q9550 -> i5 6500 ) and had to change motherboards as well. After the upgrade, the sound quality is degraded - I have no idea what the proper technical term is. Out of 5 seconds of playback maybe 4 have really poor quality like a speaker that is at its maximum and sound is distorted.

I have tried another set of headphones - same issue. The problem appears with both the front and the rear panel. I have another way of getting sound out - my monitor also playback sound via HDMI. I’ve enabled playback via my monitor, plugged in the headphones and sound is much better.

Is there any way I can debug / fix the sound issue? Should I file a bug?

Thanks,

Robert

In case it’s useful, here’s some output from the kernel log:

$ dmesg | grep -i snd_hda
    3.859875] snd_hda_intel 0000:01:00.1: Disabling MSI
    3.859878] snd_hda_intel 0000:01:00.1: Handle vga_switcheroo audio client
    3.907896] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1f.3: failed to add i915 component master (-19)
    3.922368] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC0D0: autoconfig for ALC887-VD: line_outs=1 (0x14/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0) type:line
    3.922371] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC0D0:    speaker_outs=0 (0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)
    3.922372] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC0D0:    hp_outs=1 (0x1b/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)
    3.922373] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC0D0:    mono: mono_out=0x0
    3.922374] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC0D0:    inputs:
    3.922375] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC0D0:      Front Mic=0x19
    3.922376] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC0D0:      Rear Mic=0x18
    3.922377] snd_hda_codec_realtek hdaudioC0D0:      Line=0x1a
    8.653216] snd_hda_codec_hdmi hdaudioC1D0: HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 1

For the record, this seems vastly better now. I don’t recall the last kernel/kernel-firmware version when it did not work properly, but with kernel 4.7.0 and kernel-firmware 20160712 there is no quality degradation ( yet, listened to music for about 10 minutes ).

I wonder if it is an impedance issue between your speakers and the motherboard output. This would give the sound issues that you are experiencing. Just a thought…

So how would I find out if that is the cause?