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Hello, I got an Alienware m18 R2 and put Arch on it. To my surprise the sound was not working out of the box. I got a Mint live USB flash drive and booted with it. To my surprise the sound was working fine on Mint. Then I started comparing stuff between the distros. I eventually stumbled upon this article that suggested to install the sof-firmware package. After I installed it the sound started working. I see that the laptop has 2 audio devices (why?!?)
$ lspci | grep -i audio
0000:00:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation Raptor Lake High Definition Audio Controller (rev 11)
0000:01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation AD106M High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)By checking alsamixer, it seems that the Intel device is the one that produces sounds, the NVidia device is just there (I have no idea why it even exists)
On Mint, using the speaker-test, I see that it has 8 channels, so running this below in Mint works fine for all channels:
$ speaker-test -c8 -t wave
speaker-test 1.2.9
Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 8 channels
WAV file(s)
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 16 to 262144
Period size range from 8 to 131072
Using max buffer size 262144
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 65536
was set buffer_size = 262144
0 - Front Left
4 - Front Center
1 - Front Right
7 - Side Right
3 - Rear Right
2 - Rear Left
6 - Side Left
5 - LFEWhen using speaker-test from Arch, it fails:
$ speaker-test -c8 -t wave
speaker-test 1.2.13
Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 8 channels
WAV file(s)
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1000:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
Playback open error: -2,No such file or directoryThen I discovered that selecting the device with -Dplughw:1, it works (so I'm guessing that the default sound device for my laptop must be the NVidia one). So, if I select the other device it works, but only 2 channels (front left and front right)
$ speaker-test -c8 -Dplughw:1 -twav
speaker-test 1.2.13
Playback device is plughw:1
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 8 channels
WAV file(s)
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 96 to 16384
Period size range from 48 to 4096
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 4096
was set buffer_size = 16384
0 - Front Left
4 - Center
1 - Front Right
7 - Side Right
3 - Rear Right
2 - Rear Left
6 - Side Left
5 - LFE
Time per period = 11.094861So, the questions are:
- Does anyone know why there is an Audio device by NVidia?
- How to change the default audio device?
- Why the other channels don't work in Arch but work in Mint? Does anyone know how to change that?
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1. the nvidia audio device is for the hdmi audio output, not sure why its seperate but it is.
2. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Advanc … aults_node
3. dont know without more info but im sure its all answered in the wiki, mint is a beginner distro and has alot of packages and configs done by default whereas arch is "build your own" so its done your way with only the packages and configs you want.
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1. the nvidia audio device is for the hdmi audio output, not sure why its seperate but it is.
2. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Advanc … aults_node
3. dont know without more info but im sure its all answered in the wiki, mint is a beginner distro and has alot of packages and configs done by default whereas arch is "build your own" so its done your way with only the packages and configs you want.
Thanks for 1 and 2, that was very helpful.
Regarding 3. I found in the wiki
To get full 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound, you will likely need to unmute other channels such as Front, Surround, Center, LFE (subwoofer) and Side. (Those are channel names with Intel HD Audio; they may vary with different hardware)But it doesn't say how to do it. I found this and tried to run:
amixer -q set Center 90% unmute
amixer -q set LFE 94% unmute
amixer -q set Surround 96% unmutebut I got:
amixer: Unable to find simple control 'Center',0
amixer: Unable to find simple control 'LFE',0
amixer: Unable to find simple control 'Surround',0In fact, if "controls" and "channels" are the same thing, they don't exist:
$ amixer scontrols
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
Simple mixer control 'Headphone',0
Simple mixer control 'Headphone Mic Boost',0
Simple mixer control 'Speaker',0
Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0
Simple mixer control 'IEC958',1
Simple mixer control 'IEC958',2
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
Simple mixer control 'Capture',1
Simple mixer control 'Auto-Mute Mode',0
Simple mixer control 'Dmic0',0
Simple mixer control 'Dmic1 2nd',0
Simple mixer control 'Headset Mic Boost',0
Simple mixer control 'Input Source',0
Simple mixer control 'Input Source',1
Simple mixer control 'PGA1.0 1 Master',0
Simple mixer control 'PGA2.0 2 Master',0
Simple mixer control 'PGA30.0 30',0
Simple mixer control 'PGA31.0 31',0
Simple mixer control 'PGA7.0 7 Master',0
Simple mixer control 'PGA8.0 8 Master',0
Simple mixer control 'PGA9.0 9 Master',0Offline