I’m trying to get my sound working on a nixos machine using alsa and pulseaudio.
I followed the steps in ALSA - NixOS Wiki, but I can’t get my default audio card to be the intel sound card (it’s stuck at a default with only one vertical bar in alsamixer).
I tried everything suggested in the alsa + nixos wiki, but nothing seems to work for me.
Does anyone have any ideas for what to try next?
Output of some commands:
$ lsmod | grep snd
snd_hda_codec_hdmi 61440 1
snd_hda_codec_realtek 90112 1
snd_hda_codec_generic 81920 1 snd_hda_codec_realtek
snd_soc_skl 90112 0
snd_soc_skl_ipc 65536 1 snd_soc_skl
snd_soc_sst_ipc 16384 1 snd_soc_skl_ipc
snd_soc_sst_dsp 28672 1 snd_soc_skl_ipc
snd_hda_ext_core 24576 1 snd_soc_skl
snd_soc_sst_match 16384 1 snd_soc_skl
snd_soc_core 233472 1 snd_soc_skl
snd_compress 24576 1 snd_soc_core
ac97_bus 16384 1 snd_soc_core
snd_pcm_dmaengine 16384 1 snd_soc_core
snd_usb_audio 188416 2
snd_usbmidi_lib 32768 1 snd_usb_audio
snd_rawmidi 28672 1 snd_usbmidi_lib
snd_seq_device 16384 1 snd_rawmidi
snd_hda_intel 36864 3
snd_hda_codec 126976 4 snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_realtek
snd_hda_core 73728 7 snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_ext_core,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_soc_skl
snd_hwdep 16384 2 snd_usb_audio,snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm 102400 9 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_usb_audio,snd_hda_ext_core,snd_hda_codec,snd_soc_core,snd_soc_skl,snd_hda_core,snd_pcm_dmaengine
snd_timer 32768 1 snd_pcm
snd 73728 25 snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_seq_device,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hwdep,snd_hda_intel,snd_usb_audio,snd_usbmidi_lib,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_timer,snd_compress,thinkpad_acpi,snd_soc_core,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi
soundcore 16384 1 snd
usbcore 249856 9 xhci_hcd,snd_usb_audio,usbhid,snd_usbmidi_lib,usb_storage,uvcvideo,btusb,xhci_pci,uas
$ amixer
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 65536
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 65536 [100%] [on]
Front Right: Playback 65536 [100%] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
Capabilities: cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Capture 0 - 65536
Front Left: Capture 65535 [100%] [on]
Front Right: Capture 65535 [100%] [on]
From the nixos config:
boot.extraModprobeConfig = ''
options snd slots=snd-hda-intel
options snd_hda_intel enable=0,1
'';
hardware.pulseaudio.enable = true;
sound.enable = true;
Extra info:
$ ls -ltr ~/.config/pulse/*default*
-rw-r--r-- 1 nick.van.den.broeck users 1 09/08/18 - 15:09 ca6beeca427f4f09bdf0a90a5d287ced-default-sink
-rw-r--r-- 1 nick.van.den.broeck users 1 09/08/18 - 15:09 ca6beeca427f4f09bdf0a90a5d287ced-default-source
Note that both files are completely empty. A colleague of mine, whose sound is working, has non-empty files here:
(Colleague's files!!!)
$ cat ~/.config/pulse/e40ef0293b384aeb83305e31ffbe4b9c-default-sink
alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo
$ cat ~/.config/pulse/e40ef0293b384aeb83305e31ffbe4b9c-default-source
alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo
$ lspci | grep -i audio
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio (rev 21)
Final note: my user is in the “audio” group.