No sound from Acer Predator laptop speakers

Sheila_Flanagan · February 1, 2025, 10:59pm

Hmmm @Gary I guess I never thought of that.

Not sure but maybe I can boot from that external SSD and if sound works there. Maybe check those settings.

Then I could get that fresh install in a VM and maybe a driver file or something will straighten it out

Thanks,
Sheila

nevj · February 1, 2025, 11:11pm

A VM install may have additional issues. You may have to allow hardware access to sound card in virt-manager.

When you disconnected your bluetooth speakers, what did you do?
Did you unpair the device ?
You dont seem to be finding anything in the sound system, so I suggest you look at the bluetooth/wifi system and see if anything is latched onto the sound source and monopolising it. Just a guess, I dont know.
Maybe you could disable bluetooth completely, and see if it frees up the sound system.

Beware of setting sail on Candlemas day

Gary · February 1, 2025, 11:22pm

OS problem sorting is something I’m not good at.
As far as I know, trying to fix it can take a lot longer than a clean install.
Neville beat me saying a VM could have issues.

Good call there.

Hope you get it sorted.

Sheila_Flanagan · February 1, 2025, 11:38pm

@nevj
When I finish with the bluetooth speaker, I turn it off and that disconnects it, as displayed by the popup on MX. But I did try turning BT off and testing the internal speakers and it had no effect.

I will not bother with the VM as it is a bit of a pain to get all of that setup. I will just boot from the ext SSD and test speaker there.

Otherwise, I will just have to keep using ext speakers as we have exhausted all possibilities I can think of today.

Sheila

nevj · February 1, 2025, 11:44pm

So we have to conclude that BT changed some mysterious system level configuration in the sound system, then forgot to change it back when you disconnected.
or
it is some other event unrelated to BT
https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/Modules/#pulseaudiomodules

There is a third possibility… that pulseaudio detected the use of BT and chsnged its own config. Pulseaudio has a database, try removing ( or renaming) the database.

berninghausen · February 1, 2025, 11:48pm

Sheila, by this time I would have flushed the machine and started with a clean install, but that’s because I never store anything of value on a traveling computer. I would also try the BT speakers with a different source to eliminate that hardware problem. Somebody smart gave me a rule I remember daily–probably my wife–KISS. And you know who the second S is.

Sheila_Flanagan · February 2, 2025, 12:13am

Well I booted from my SSD and it still had my saved session from 11.04.24, so that was before my trip but I could get no audio sound there either. You could certainly see it playing as the bars surged and even the speaker icon "blipped’ a bit till the sound ended.

@berninghausen

I know KISS. And I keep all of my personal files on another drive. It is reinstalling all of my apps that will take forever, not to mention those RDP apps assign you a new id/password so every computer I own here and at my Mom’s house would have to change in order to have remote access to all of them and the laptop.

But it is not imperative that those speakers work, my company gave me a wonderful small BT speaker (2" x 4" or 5.08 x 10.16 cm) that I can take with me when I travel as well as use for the laptop.

I just do not like it when things do not work the way they are supposed to.

Thanks for all the help. If I ever get it working, I will update the thread, but till now, the only solution would be a fresh install and I just do not have the time to set MX up and reinstall/tweak everything since I installed it almost 2 years ago.

Sheila

Gary · February 2, 2025, 12:22am

As an aside, my yearly VPN subsciption fee (due today) wasn’t paid by my bank.
I hadn’t changed any payment details.

After a few hours of to and fro, it turned out to be their software problem.

It sucks that I had spend so much time and effort to sort.

Sorry to be off topic.

Oh! just seen Bill’s post, love it. A good flush down the pan often works wonders

berninghausen · February 2, 2025, 1:39am

I don’t mean to insult you, Sheila, just share some of my own frustration with you. I have just about settled on Fedora and Emmabuntus as daily drivers, using just the apps that are part of the original distro. Reliability and predictability are essential. Even at 77, it’s hard for me to bin a piece of hardware that doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. We tried an air fryer, and after a year the display started dropping segments. It departed in the big truck Thursday. Didn’t even touch it with a screwdriver.

Sheila_Flanagan · February 2, 2025, 1:50am

No insult perceived at all, @berninghausen

It’s just that I have run my own business for 25 years and that requires apps not installed with an OS, as well as my husband is semi-retired and so I took a work from home job. That requires certain things as well.

But most important is the fact of my elderly mom who is living alone where I have to monitor her and take care of all of her finances, shopping, get her rides to dr appts, lab work, etc. and I am able to do all of that via RDP apps. I even have to connect to her computer, at her house from mine, so that I can then connect to her cell phone, as she often struggles to get it answered when I call her. Then there are the camera apps for monitoring her via video feed 24/7.

There are just so many apps I use that have to be installed, setup, etc, that I just have no more room on the plate for now.

I just spent today setting up a used laptop for my youngest daughter as hers was over 10 years old, had a screen going out and while it works with Sparky that I installed on it, the screen will not last long so I found a used one for cheap. But it’s Mom who has to set it up.

Sheila

nevj · February 2, 2025, 2:22am

That does not leave many possibilities…
The hardware works with Garuda, the hardware used to work with MX before you used BT, the hardware does not work with any version of MX now…

So, not software, and not hardware?
Are you sure of all your test results?

Sheila_Flanagan · February 2, 2025, 2:31am

At this point, I am unsure of a lot! Now I am having issues connecting the same BT speaker I have used for a month!

Get the br-failed-connection error even if I remove it and try again. And I have the main file everyone says “fixes” it in MX, so I looked at some additional files in the package manager relative to pulseaudio/pipewire and when I tried to install, for the first time ever, I get, “fix broken packages” but I cannot fix broken packages as I cannot find them in any commands tried.

Sigh. It seems one issue leads to another for me today, at least on my own computer.

Sheila

daniel.m.tripp · February 2, 2025, 4:34am

This may be unrelated - but - some Intel audio chipsets stopped working after about Ubuntu 16…

I have a gigabyte Brix (dual core celeron or whatever the low power of the i3 is) - circa 2017…

Audio worked fine from the audio on-board via the 3.5 mm jack - in Ubuntu 16, and also out via HDMI.

Ubuntu 18? No! Elementary 6 or 7? No! Fedora20 something? No! RHEL 8 - No! But Audio still worked via HDMI…

It was a “known” issue with certain Intel chipsets in Linux… No idea if your issue is related…

So I gave up… No longer using it (was running RHEL8 headless on there until fairly recently - didn’t need sound)…

kovacslt · February 2, 2025, 7:58am

Topic got TLDR while I was sleeping.
You wrote somewhere, under Garuda the soznd works as expected.
Can we compare the output of
aplay -l

from Garuda to MX?

Sheila_Flanagan · February 2, 2025, 1:49pm

I am going to see if I can find the article on that I read yesterday. There was some mention of a Realtek #2xxx that said it had issues in the past year. Maybe an update killed the sound for my model. But seems like the HDMI would still work.

Thanks,
Sheila

Sheila_Flanagan · February 2, 2025, 2:03pm

Apparently, in the Arch-based Garuda, alsa-utils is not installed.

I am almost afraid to install it and mess this one’s sound up. But here it is:

╭─myviolinsings@AcerGarudaOS in ~ as 🧙 took 6m49s
[🔍] × aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [LG FULL HD]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 3 [HDMI 3]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: sofhdadsp [sof-hda-dsp], device 0: HDA Analog (*) []
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: sofhdadsp [sof-hda-dsp], device 3: HDMI1 (*) []
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: sofhdadsp [sof-hda-dsp], device 4: HDMI2 (*) []
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: sofhdadsp [sof-hda-dsp], device 5: HDMI3 (*) []
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: sofhdadsp [sof-hda-dsp], device 31: HDA Analog Deep Buffer (*) []
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Luckily, testing sound after installing the above still worked.

And here is MX results:

 aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [LG FULL HD]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 3 [HDMI 3]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: sofhdadsp [sof-hda-dsp], device 0: HDA Analog (*) []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: sofhdadsp [sof-hda-dsp], device 3: HDMI1 (*) []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: sofhdadsp [sof-hda-dsp], device 4: HDMI2 (*) []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: sofhdadsp [sof-hda-dsp], device 5: HDMI3 (*) []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: sofhdadsp [sof-hda-dsp], device 31: HDA Analog Deep Buffer (*) []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Thanks,
Sheila

Sheila_Flanagan · February 2, 2025, 2:18pm

I am beginning to wonder if @Daniel_Phillips was right and some kernel update caused the issue. I found another discussion of this issue in MX and updating to a “then” newer kernel fixed it for the user. His was from 5.12 to 6.0. I am now running 6.5.

How do I find the kernel upgrades in the past couple of months? I did see that in Jan there was an upgrade. Since I do not know the exact date the issue began, just know it was sometime after I got home in Dec, just thought maybe we could look at that as an issue.

UPDATE: Booted up my Ventoy with MX 23.1 and sound worked in a live session. Whereas now I am in that kernel upgrade from Jan to MX 23.5. Just thought I’d mention that.

Is there anything that can be checked in a live session that might point us to the difference in the current setup?

Thanks,
Sheila

berninghausen · February 2, 2025, 2:37pm

We’re grandparents with a complicated family situation, so I understand and sympathize. I’m glad you have discovered the wonderful world of used computers ( this box is a 2013 or so HP SFF office model). We fit out younger members of the family with Chromebooks or tablets–durable and cheap. If they want fancy, they have to learn to set them up. I’ll remember you in my good thoughts moments.

Sheila_Flanagan · February 2, 2025, 3:10pm

So this is what I found in looking at the kernel upgrades since 23.1 (where sound worked):

Jan 2024 MX-23.2 (possible related updates)

AHS Xfce release features the 6.6 liquorix kernel, updated firmware and mesa libraries. An opt-in option for auto-updates is in MX-Packageinstaller ->Popular Apps → Kernels.
Pipewire 1.0

May 2024 MX-23.3 (related updates)

Pipewire 1.0 (1.0.4 available in test repo). (actually true on 23.2 as well, but bears repeating since its not debian standard.

Sept 2024 MX-23.4 (related updates)

pipewire-setup-mx updated to make pipewire/wireplumber startup under sysVinit more reliable, especially for KDE users. (Does not apply to me: Xfce & systemd)

Jan 2025 MX-23.5 (no related updates found in overview)
All kernel updates: The standard Xfce, KDE, and fluxbox isos are all updated to the latest 6.1.123 kernel. AHS now uses the 6.12.8 liqourix kernel, with auto-updates enabled.

So I went into the current package installer and found:
Pipewire-audio (recommended set of PipeWire pkgs for a standard desktop)

When I tried to install it (as it was not installed), I got this:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 pipewire-alsa : Depends: pipewire (= 1.0.0-1~mx23+1) but 1.0.6-1~mx23+1 is to be installed
                 Depends: libpipewire-0.3-0 (= 1.0.0-1~mx23+1) but 1.0.6-1~mx23+1 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

So isn’t 1.0.6-1 newer than 1.0.0-1, which has been in use since MX 23.1? Yet something I have installed conflicts?

Just trying to cover all bases. My knowledge of these things is limited, so let me know if this even applies here.

Sheila

Daniel_Phillips · February 2, 2025, 3:34pm

Every thing changed, from kernel 5 to kernel 6, I have had to freeze some of my older PC’s at kernel 5, although Endeavours 6.6.72-1-lts has found my intel sound device and has found the nouveau driver for my Nvidia graphics card.
My older PC’s just will not run any Ubuntu related distros and some that are Debian related, like MX.
I have now converted all my old PC’s to either Endeavours or Gentoo!!!