Getting sound from onboard ALC1220 + HDMI with Raven/Raven2/Fenghuang in 15.1

English Multimedia
1

Some systems are experiencing problems with getting sound from onboard audio and sending audio signal through HDMI cable when using relatively new Raven2 APUs.
Mr. mrmazda describes his troubles here.
I had the same problems with nearly the same hardware.

Here is my solution.

  1. Update your Leap 15.1 as described here.

  2. Install PulseAudio’s “pasystray” utility. You may also install other PulseAudio utilities.
    Another useful terminal-run utility is


alsamixer
  1. Start Yast → Hardware → Sound and set up both audio cards “Family 17h (Models 10h-1fh) HD Audio Controller” and “Raven/Raven2/Fenghuang HDMI/DP Audio Controller” using button “Edit” located in the left bottom corner.
    Set one of them as a primary using button ~“Other” → “Set as the Primary Card” located in the right bottom corner.
    “Family 17h (Models 10h-1fh) HD Audio Controller” = onboard audio with some Realtek chip (ALC1220 for a new systems).

And here goes the main solution: for some reason these two cards are swapped in the YaST sound settings window.
That means: if you selected “Raven/Raven2/Fenghuang HDMI/DP Audio Controller” as primary then the real primary card will be “Family 17h (Models 10h-1fh) HD Audio Controller”, and vice versa.
You may check it selecting “Other” → “Play Test Sound”.
Or select “Other” → “Volume…”, then REAL “Family 17h (Models 10h-1fh) HD Audio Controller” would have settings for a different outputs, and REAL “Raven/Raven2/Fenghuang HDMI/DP Audio Controller” would have none of them.

Set with plasmoid “Volume” appropriate HDMI output.

ASUS says onboard audio Realtek ALC1220 supports 7.1 sound output, but I only see up to 5.1 (and 7.1 for HDMI).
I don’t use 7.1 sound, so I don’t perform additional researches.

IMHO that’s all.

You may check or change your settings with “pasystray” or “alsamixer”.
You may ask your questions here to shed some light on an undescribed items.

I did it with a default for a Leap 15.1 PulseAudio and ALSA packets.
Maybe update for a PulseAudio 11.1 → 13.0 and ALSA will help.

Hint: to run YaST in an english version in a text mode you may run in terminal this command as a root:


env LANGUAGE=en_EN.UTF-8 yast
2

There are often various ways to address issues in GNU/Linux.

Many thanks for sharing yours !!

3

Don’t be surprised if it does not work. Here’s why, from bug 1163046, by Takashi Iwai, apparent “owner” of Bugzilla Component Sound:

Don’t use YaST sound setup for such modern systems. It’s a thing to be dropped in future in anyway, just like X setup.

4

SDB:Intel-HDA sound problems

SDB:Audio troubleshooting

Intel HDA chipset

When you use the built-in audio of your Intel Haswell processor the default audio order is first HDMI and then “PCH” (analog). Changing the order via the OpenSuse 13.2 Sound configuration of the Yast Control Center probably will not work as Yast will try to set the order using:

options snd slots=snd-hda-intel,snd-hda-intel
To fix this, open /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf and change it to:

alias snd-card-1 snd-hda-intel
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel

options snd-hda-intel id=PCH index=0
options snd-hda-intel id=HDMI index=1
For the “id” to use, see the output of “aplay -l”.

5

I saw that. It’s a consequence of trouble I had when I bought my Haswell years ago. It doesn’t work on my Intel Kaby Lake motherboards.