Dell XPS 13 (9320): microphone not working

tobiasBora · March 7, 2024, 1:28am

I was very surprised to see that my Dell XPS 13 (9320) is not able to record from the microphone: I get a white noise:

I tried both NixOs unstable and 23.11, kernel 6.1 and 6.7, pipewire and pulseaudio… no success (except that in pulseaudio, it does not record any noise).

I tried to check in alsamixer if I could change some settings to make it work… but it’s like huge. I tried to move all bars, without success:

What is surprising is that in Dell XPS 13 Plus (9320) - ArchWiki they mention that the microphone should work out of the box, and indeed ubuntu (Dell flavor) had no issue with the microphone.

In 23.11 I get this message in dmesg:

[   12.571529] sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: Firmware info: version 2:2:0-57864
[   12.571532] sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: Firmware: ABI 3:22:1 Kernel ABI 3:23:0
...
[   12.595314] intel vsc not ready
[   12.603233] sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: Topology: ABI 3:22:1 Kernel ABI 3:23:0
[   12.603345] sof_sdw sof_sdw: ASoC: Parent card not yet available, widget card binding deferred
[   12.603424] dw-apb-uart.2: ttyS0 at MMIO 0x4017002000 (irq = 16, base_baud = 6250000) is a 16550A
[   12.617348] sof_sdw sof_sdw: hda_dsp_hdmi_build_controls: no PCM in topology for HDMI converter 3

Any idea what I can try next?

$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4621 (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] (rev 0c)
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake Innovation Platform Framework Processor Participant (rev 02)
00:05.0 Multimedia controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake Imaging Signal Processor (rev 02)
00:06.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 12th Gen Core Processor PCI Express x4 Controller #0 (rev 02)
00:07.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 PCI Express Root Port #0 (rev 02)
00:07.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 PCI Express Root Port #2 (rev 02)
00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 12th Gen Core Processor Gaussian & Neural Accelerator (rev 02)
00:0d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 USB Controller (rev 02)
00:0d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 NHI #0 (rev 02)
00:0d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 NHI #1 (rev 02)
00:12.0 Serial controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P Integrated Sensor Hub (rev 01)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH USB 3.2 xHCI Host Controller (rev 01)
00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH Shared SRAM (rev 01)
00:14.3 Network controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P PCH CNVi WiFi (rev 01)
00:15.0 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH Serial IO I2C Controller #0 (rev 01)
00:15.1 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH Serial IO I2C Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH HECI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH UART #0 (rev 01)
00:1e.3 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake SPI Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH eSPI Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH-P High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH-P SMBus Host Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P PCH SPI Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: SK hynix Gold P31/BC711/PC711 NVMe Solid State Drive

EDIT

I also tried to add

boot.initrd.availableKernelModules = [ "xhci_pci" "thunderbolt" "nvme" "usb_storage" "usbhid" "sd_mod" "snd_soc_rt715_sdca" "snd_soc_rt1316_sdw" "snd_sof_pci_intel_tgl" "snd_hda_intel" "snd_soc_sof_sdw" "i915" ];

but then it is even worse, I get an error

[    4.275488] sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: Direct firmware load for intel/sof/sof-adl.ri failed with error -2
[    4.275490] sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: error: sof firmware file is missing, you might need to
[    4.275490] sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3:        download it from https://github.com/thesofproject/sof-bin/
[    4.275491] sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: error: failed to load DSP firmware -2
[    4.280408] sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: error: sof_probe_work failed err: -2
[    4.281944] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] fb0: i915drmfb frame buffer device

not sure if it is expected or not (note that I get this error in unstable). But this file seems to exist (in its compressed form):

$ $ less /run/current-system/firmware/intel/sof/sof-adl.ri.xz  | head
==> (lesspipe 2.11) append : to filename to view the original octet-stream file
XMan
dtermin.
extman
57864
 <RG-2017.8-linux>
$CPD
ADSP
ADSP.man
cavs0015.met

Here is the output of dmesg

EDIT I even tried to upgrade the bios, not a single change

tobiasBora · March 8, 2024, 1:22am

Whoooo after so long I finally found the solution… surprisingly simple (I saw it in some threads, but I was not expect it to work, and for some reasons I was not able to find the package where it is installed). The idea is to run:

$ nix-shell -p alsa-utils
$ sudo alsactl init

The only problem is that it tries to use /bin/rm and /bin/mkdir, so I needed a simple dirty workaround presented here alsactl init refers to /bin/rm and /bin/mkdir · Issue #294170 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub

But I tried to reboot, and it seems to work even after a reboot, so this change does not even need to be permanent!

For reference, the configuration I tested is basically taken from here NixOS config on Dell XPS 13 Plus 9320 · GitHub, running 23.11 and default kernel 6.1, see also this discussion It Just Works ™️ · GitHub

guibou · September 4, 2024, 5:08pm

Thank you for this solution.

For the record, I strace the alsactl init process and it seems that it write the file /var/lib/alsa/card0.conf.d/ctl-remap.conf with the following content:

ctl.default {
	@args.0 CARD
	@args.CARD.type string
	type remap
	child {
		type hw
		card $CARD
	}
}

I had not tested if just doing so manually could fix the problem, but I’ll do that next time I observe the problem (which should happen quickly, we have 20 xps 9315 at work). If yes, I’ll hardcode this file in my nixos setup, this is still magic, but easier to reproduce than the alsactl init + magic patching for rm and mkdir.

guibou · September 11, 2024, 1:13pm

Note that amixer set Capture toggle directly enable the microphone without using the alsactl init and associated hack.