Arch Linux

Friz64

Member

Registered: 2022-04-09

Posts: 5

[SOLVED] No front panel audio on Realtek ALC887

My Intel HD Audio controller is the Realtek ALC887 (that is, according to my mainboard manual; it gets recognized as an ALC891 in ALSA but I think it doesn't matter as that is just a rebrand as far as I can tell).

My problem is that the front panel audio jack is not working while the back one works just fine.

Generally, everything looks correct on Linux, everything gets recognized correctly and the sound looks like it's playing. To rule out pipewire, I used `speakertest` and `aplay` to play on the raw ALSA device, which also looked like it was working, but no sound came out.

So, to rule out any hardware issues I blacklisted the `snd_hda_intel` kernel module, set up a Windows 10 VM and passed through my audio controller PCI device, which resulted in flawless audio playback on the front panel audio. When I then shut down that VM, and modprobe `snd_hda_intel` manually, I can use the front panel audio jack on Linux just fine until I reboot (the reboot, after removing the blacklist).

It also behaves the exact same way on Fedora. My conclusion is that this is a kernel bug.

Where do I go from now?

Last edited by Friz64 (2022-04-11 03:00:49)

Friz64

Member

Registered: 2022-04-09

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] No front panel audio on Realtek ALC887

I just found this Linux Mint forum post which is about the exact same issue I am having: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic. … 8&t=289679

Last edited by Friz64 (2022-04-10 13:40:38)

Friz64

Member

Registered: 2022-04-09

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] No front panel audio on Realtek ALC887

Here is the output of alsa-info.sh.

Normal Linux initialized version: https://alsa-project.org/db/?f=1d1a7b30 … 6716a322d2
Windows VM initialized version, with a later modprobe: https://alsa-project.org/db/?f=6233a5be … 77226f042b

Looking at the diff between these two, I'm seeing amplifier specific changes. The Linux Kernel documentation also seems to point me in this direction: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/ … one-output.

Friz64

Member

Registered: 2022-04-09

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] No front panel audio on Realtek ALC887

I got it! Enabling the EAPD bit on NID 0x21 makes the sound work.

# hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC1D0 0x21 SET_EAPD_BTLENABLE 0x2

Now I just need a solid method of doing this at boot.

Friz64

Member

Registered: 2022-04-09

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] No front panel audio on Realtek ALC887

I successfully used this systemd unit to correctly configure the ALC887 on boot.

[Unit]
Description=Fix ALC887 front panel audio
After=sound.target
Requires=sound.target

[Service]
ExecStart=hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC1D0 0x21 SET_EAPD_BTLENABLE 0x2

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

What's left to do is to file a kernel bug report... Marking this topic as solved now though.

[1]: https://git.alsa-project.org/?p=alsa-to … ;a=summary

Last edited by Friz64 (2022-04-11 11:50:12)

Zeltron6

Member

Registered: 2023-04-12

Posts: 1

Re: [SOLVED] No front panel audio on Realtek ALC887

Hello,

I was experiencing seemingly the exact same issue. My front headphone jack was working fine but the green line out jack of my motherboard (Gigabyte B550m DS3H AC) was not working. Massive props to Friz64, as the command that enables EADP worked.

My PC has a different Realtek card, ALC897, so I had to replace 0x21 with 0x14 (whichever node that has the name "Front Playback Switch" when you run alsa-info). This alone did not work. I had to also go into alsamixer, select my soundcard and disable auto-mute.

Last edited by Zeltron6 (2023-04-13 00:10:45)

PedroSnow

Member

Registered: 2023-11-30

Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] No front panel audio on Realtek ALC887

This used to work for me when i used Arch last year, but i changed back to Windows.

Now i installed Arch again and for some reason this is not working for me anymore. Could it be because of Pipewire?

PedroSnow

Member

Registered: 2023-11-30

Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] No front panel audio on Realtek ALC887

Solved.

For some reason /dev/snd/hwC1D0 was the audio from HDMI, i discovered it when running hdajacksensetest -s -c 1. But when running hdajacksensetest -s -c 2 it shows info from my audio card.
So just changing the ID and running sudo hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC2D0 0x21 SET_EAPD_BTLENABLE 0x2 solved the issue.