3mo ago

I'm having audio issues with Linux and while I have a temporary solution, I'd like to have a permanent solution if possible.

Final update (hopefully): It seems that I have been able to fix the issue. I'm not sure what exactly caused the problem but either removing fluidsynth or installing the wireplumber ppa fixed the issue and I have working audio again. I've also removed pulseaudio and undid my edit to the modprobe blacklist, as they were only done as a temporary solution and they are no longer necessary.

For the past three days, I've been having this issue where my computer starts with no audio and the only sound device listed is a "dummy output" device. I've tried looking online for solution but the only solution I found has to be redone manually every time I start/restart my computer. It also seems like this issue is common with and possibly specific to the sound card my computer has, which is an "Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio".

The solution that worked for me was to add blacklist snd_soc_avs to the modprobe blacklist and then run the two commands sudo alsa force-reload and pulseaudio. Adding snd_soc_avs to the blacklist permanently brought back my actually audio devices but it didn't fix the audio nor did it remove the dummy output device. The two commands I listed do restore the audio and remove the dummy output device but they only work for the current session and I have to run them again after starting/restarting my computer.

I have no problem doing this if there isn't a permanent solution but I would like a permanent solution, if possible.

42 comments

What distro are you on?
- I'm using the Cinnamon edition of Linux Mint 22.1. I was going to mention this in the post but I wasn't sure if I needed to, seeing that this issue seems to be present in other distros as well and I'm not the only person to experience this issue with this sound card.
  
  Mint 22 is on pipewire now. You need to get rid of pulseaudio, go with pipewire and the pipewire-pulse compat layer. I had major problems until I installed an upgraded Wireplumber to 0.5 from ppa:pipewire-debian/pipewire-upstream
  After that, you may have further issues with your configuration, and I would start by looking at your syslog for errors indicating what might be happening.
While it's not the solution you're looking for, you can always write a script for those commands, and have it run on each startup.
I had an issue like this recently on Debian testing and it turns out fluidsynth was hogging the sound device and so pipewire couldn't open it. IDK why it was doing that all of a sudden. The symptom was also just having the dummy device.
I think what I did to figure this out was look at the pipewire logs and it said something to the effect that it couldn't open the sound device because it was busy, and according to my bash history I did fuser -fv /dev/snd/* and figured out it was fluidsynth that was using it, which I then disabled or maybe uninstalled because wtf do I need midi for anyway.
Your problem may be different, but I can imagine, theoretically, that all the stuff you're doing makes it so pulseaudio gets first dibs on the (otherwise busy) sound device and so maybe you have misdiagnosed the problem.
- When I run that command, I get: $ fuser -fv /dev/snd/* USER PID ACCESS COMMAND /dev/snd/controlC0: j 2002 F.... wireplumber j 11734 F.... pulseaudio /dev/snd/seq: j 1998 F.... pipewire
  I know pulseaudio is only running because I manually ran it, so could it be wireplumber that's causing the issue?
  
  I mean it's definitely weird that wireplumber and pulseaudio are running simultanously, that is probably not great (or maybe it's harmless, idk), but it's normal when using pipewire to have wireplumber on control0.
  Anyway you should try running fuser before you apply your fix.
  Also I deleted my original post, because I wasn't super happy about it, and made new one, so now there are two versions of this post. Sorry.
If it's just a matter of pulse selecting the wrong device I also had that issue and was able to work around it by adding a line to the end of my: /etc/pulse/default.pa
set-card-profile alsa_card.pci-0000_0e_00.3 output:analog-stereo+input:analog-stereo
You can get the correct name for your device with: pacmd list-sinks
- While I have already found a working solution, I think the issue wasn't that it was selecting the wrong device. it was almost as if my normal audio devices didn't exist for some reason because nothing could see them, even my input devices were missing.
I mean something must have changed three days ago, kernel update maybe? You could try running a different kernel and see if this fixes it automagically.
I recently also had an issue where I could only see a dummy device, and that got me wondering. It was caused by fluidsynth hogging the audio device. So maybe could you check something? Look at the log file for pipewire (journalctl --user -u pipewire here) and do fuser -fv /dev/snd/* when it's still in its broken state to see if (maybe) you're misdiagnosing the problem. Because I could possibly sort of imagine that doing the force-reload and start pulseaudio dance might actually have seemingly fixed my fluidsynth issue by inadvertently making it so that pulseaudio got a hold of the audio device.
- I thought that it was a kernel update too but the last time it was updated was two weeks ago and nothing else relevant to audio was updated either.
  I've restarted my computer and the fuser command does show mutiple instances of fluidsynth. I also ran the journalctl command and I'm getting a bunch of the same error messages over and over again. They are:
  mod.jackdbus-detect: Failed to receive jackdbus reply: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.jackaudio.service was not provided by any .service files
  spa.alsa: 'front:0': playback open failed: Device or resource busy
  mod.adapter: 0x5794b3a2b2a0: can't get format: Device or resource busy
  
  Yeah actually looks like the same issue I had. Just uninstall fluidsynth with apt remove fluidsynth and (probably) reboot, and see if that fixes it.
Shot in the dark here...
You said that blacklisting the module brought back your device, but not the sound. Is it possible that pulse is selecting the dummy as the default interface?
Before reloading alsa and restarting pulse - If you go into pavucontrol and change the input/output devices to your sound card, does the sound start working?
If that's the case, then you should be able to edit your pulse config to force your audio device to be default, regardless of whether or not the dummy is present.
(No idea about the dummy device, sorry)
- I restarted my computer to check and if I run pavucontrol after starting, the only audio device listed is the dummy device. So I don't know if that's possible.
  
  Ah, ok. I guess I misunderstood.
  I'm afraid I don't have any other suggestions that haven't already been made elsewhere in the thread.
  Best of luck, and I hope you get it figured out.
pulseaudio
Use PipeWire instead.
- I am, wireplumber is part of pipewire.
i stopped having such problems ever since i switched to wayland. i guess you could find the right configs and persist it with ALSA and PulseAudio config files
- I tried looking into configuring alsa and pulseaudio but the only configuration they seem to have aren't applicable to my issue. I would just switch to wayland but none of my currently preferred desktop environments have full wayland support.
  
  sorry, i of course meant PipeWire, wayland has nothing to do with audio.

42 comments