Headphone Jack won't work without ac adapter

English Hardware
#1

This minor annoyance is specific to my hardware, that the headphone jack won’t work without ac adapter on this laptop (will work under a special case)*

*It works if something is playing and I disconnect it, and don’t stop playback at all without the adapter, and plug it back in.
Basically it stops when no ac adapter + nothing playing, then it stops working unless I do the following:

Suspend the laptop, Plug in the ac adapter, switch it on, wait for ~5 seconds, plug in the jack

Also popping sounds can be heard on connecting the jack.

I want to figure out if I can work around this by disabling some power saving setting, or do I need to get it replaced.
There are no settings for sound card power management to be found in yast sound module.

#2

I’ve never heard of this kind of quirky behaviour before. Laptop model?

#3

It’s a Dell inspiron 5567 7th gen i5 model with amd graphics
https://www.dell.com/en-in/shop/laptops-2-in-1-pcs/inspiron-15-5567/spd/inspiron-15-5567-laptop

This problem started happening after getting the motherboard replaced due to mistake of a technician who plugged in the ram while it was running :frowning:

#4

Maybe some power saving mode in the BIOS/UEFI???

#5

I coudn’t find such a setting in the bios.

#6

I found a workaround,
In /etc/default/tlp, changing:

SOUND_POWER_SAVE_ON_BAT=1

to

SOUND_POWER_SAVE_ON_BAT=0

did the trick. It now works on ac.

Thanks for your assistance.

#7

Thanks for the update. It may be helpful to others who come searching. :slight_smile:

#8

Interesting. I would not have guessed this as a solution. I have read of “SOUND_POWER_SAVE_ON_BAT=0” being used as a fix to address a problem where Speakers pop when starting audio system

One possible side effect of this may be that on a laptop with battery this may drain the battery a bit faster.

#9

Yes, although I’m aware of TLP and what a useful utility it is, I didn’t realise it is installed by default in Tumbleweed. I know some users manually install it in other portable desktop environments though.

More info here…
https://linrunner.de/en/tlp/tlp.html