Sound/Audio issues

Since I run an upgrade recently I’ve had issues with the audio on my laptop (HP Probook 440 G8 Notebook PC). When I boot up my laptop and play something on YouTube the sound is fine until I hit pause or the video buffers, and then plays again, I lose audio/sound. At this point it affects even VLC and Spotify applications because I cannot hear anything playing. Test sounds in the settings also yield nothing. Please advise.

Sound card details are as follows:
Audio: Device-1: Intel Tiger Lake-LP Smart Sound Audio driver: sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.14.21-150400.24.38-default running: yes
Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: yes
Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.49 running: yes

$ sudo hwinfo --sound
[sudo] password for root:
18: PCI 1f.3: 0401 Multimedia audio controller
[Created at pci.386]
Unique ID: nS1_.HL7Ug4WF67F
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.3
SysFS BusID: 0000:00:1f.3
Hardware Class: sound
Model: "Intel Tiger Lake-LP Smart Sound Technology Audio Controller"
Vendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
Device: pci 0xa0c8 "Tiger Lake-LP Smart Sound Technology Audio Controller"
SubVendor: pci 0x103c "Hewlett-Packard Company"
SubDevice: pci 0x8a74
Revision: 0x20
Driver: "sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl"
Driver Modules: "snd_sof_pci_intel_tgl"
Memory Range: 0x6003248000-0x600324bfff (rw,non-prefetchable)
Memory Range: 0x6003000000-0x60030fffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
IRQ: 169 (4088 events)
Module Alias: "pci:v00008086d0000A0C8sv0000103Csd00008A74bc04sc01i00"
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: snd_hda_intel is not active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe snd_hda_intel"
Driver Info #1:
Driver Status: snd_sof_pci_intel_tgl is active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe snd_sof_pci_intel_tgl"
Config Status: cfg=yes, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown

Some help here please. I’m stuck.

Not sure what is wrong here, but similar symptoms to that reported in this Manjaro thread…

There it was found a kernel regression was the cause. That may (or may not) be the cause of the issue here with respect to openSUSE Leap 15.4.

FWIW, I only have pipewire active, and I’m using the ‘pipewire-pulse’ daemon (pipewire-pulseaudio package installed) for PA compatibility, which will remove pulseaudio itself. I’m not sure if that is relevant here though. However, I’m not experiencing the symptoms you’re describing, so it could be driver specific.

Following on from this, there does seem to be reports of there being an ALSA related bug impacting on those with Intel Skylake and TigerLake chipsets, so might be worth investigating this line of inquiry perhaps.

I still have LEAP-15.3 with a custom 5.15.10-lp153.2.g85804f3-default kernel on my Lenovo-X1 carbon which has a Intel Tiger Lake-LP Smart Sound Audio … and have yet to install LEAP-15.4.

Sound works great.

I did test my laptop with a liveUSB of LEAP-15.4 (which has a different stock kernel) and audio worked fine after installing sof_firmware and restarting the audio. Hence that is not a good test.

Likely I won’t be able to attempt to replicate this for a week or more, when I go to install this version of LEAP (15.4) on my laptop.

Did you try booting to an older kernel version (from grub)?

1 Like

Thanks everyone. It’s been working fine today. I’ll try all these options.

I’ve noticed that when I reboot my laptop, at times my sound card will appear as not configured on Yast. When I enable it both applications like VLC and browser will work (produce output) however, when I set it as primary sound card, it will stop working. This all started after some update zypper up that I run back in December.

I general, there should be no need to configure your sound card with YaST. Apart from what I have already shared from a quick search, I’m not sure what else to offer here. Did you try oldcpu’s suggestion (re kernel)?

I have only seen this behaviour when one has two audio devices on a computer, and the operating systems can randomly (upon boot) switch between which one is the primary audio system.

If you obtain the same behaviour with a different kernel (which is likely selectable using an option in the grub boot menu) , then try the following, running the following diagnostic script twice … once when sound working properly, and once when sound is not working properly, and provide the link to the diagnostic script output for both cases. We can compare the two outputs and see if there are any noticeable differnces to provide a hint as to what is taking place.

You can run the diagnostic script by opening an xterm or konsole, and type the following as a regular user (with your computer connected to the internet):

/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh

Select the upload/share when prompted, and let the script run to completion. Then copy the link that is in the xterm/konsole once the script completes and post the link here. Do this twice, once when sound works, and once when sound doesn’t work.

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I booted in the previous kernel version [Linux 5.14.21-150400.24.33-default] and all seems fine, I don’t have to configure the sound card despite the fact that it shows that it is Not Configured. Safe to say this is a bug with the new kernel version .38-default? Will I keep booting in this kernel version for now? Below are the diagnostics as requested. Hope they make sense

When working :: http://alsa-project.org/db/?f=df102573af55e16b5956c67b14997d66ad43a7b7

When it stops working :: http://alsa-project.org/db/?f=b1c54e063cc898b6af445e9f47c12f4ba37a691d

Thank you guys for your help and advice

If you want sound to work then I would say yes. You might also want to consider locking that kernel version such that it is not deleted.

I did a comparison between “not working” and “working” (based on the links that you provided) and its beyond my ability to say if the difference points to anything significant. I note:

diff notwork.txt work.txt 
5c5
< !!Script ran on: Wed Jan 18 06:39:01 UTC 2023
---
> !!Script ran on: Wed Jan 18 06:07:55 UTC 2023
374c374
<   Converter: stream=1, channel=0
---
>   Converter: stream=0, channel=0
386c386
<   Converter: stream=1, channel=0
---
>   Converter: stream=0, channel=0
798c798
< crw-rw----  1 root audio 116,  4 Jan 18 09:32 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
---
> crw-rw----  1 root audio 116,  4 Jan 18 09:04 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
823c823
<   Subdevices: 0/1
---
>   Subdevices: 1/1

Where that doesn’t tell me anything that I can act on.

I believe a bug report on openSUSE may be appropriate.

1 Like

Noted! Appreciated. Thank you for your time.

I agree. Kernel-related as suspected.

This sounds completely like my issue

  • Running “pulseaudio -k” should return your sound until the sound falls asleep again for more then 5 seconds.
  • I have added snd-intel-dspcfg.dsp_driver=1 to Grub. That solves it but at the cost of losing your internal microphone (external will work).

I am still waiting for a new kernel with a final solution.