Audio issues running Manjaro with Pulseaudio on OMNIGUL

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1

I’m running Manjaro with kernel 6.8. The audio controller was detected after I ran @WeirdTreeThing 's script, but it has some issues. First, the internal speakers sound garbled and choppy.

Secondly, there’s an inconsistency between the displayed volume level and the actual volume level coming out of the USB-connected headphones.

alsamixer -c0, the volume controls are seemingly messed up. It’s unclear to me whether it’s something that can be fixed from Pulseaudio, or if it’s a bug in the audio controller.

Peek 2024-04-21 21-44

Both issues aren’t specific to Pulseaudio; I’ve also noticed them in Pipewire. The volume control of the internal speakers seems to work as expected, although I couldn’t locate its matching control in Pulseaudio like I did for the connected headphones.

Any help would be appreciated.

2

I have exactly the same issue with the audio on Manjaro.

I reverted to ChromeOS, and am going to start fresh with the latest firmware and maybe another Linux OS (if UFS is detected). With my first try, Manjaro was the only distro that installed.

I hope to have something running this week.

3

With the latest firmware update, UFS should be supported out-of-the-box. Previously, I’ve tested EndeavourOS and was met with the same issues.

4

You may want to follow this bug report that I’ve opened recently.

5

What about PipeWire? Did you try it?

6

Yes, and it didn’t resolve the issue. I actually switched over to Pulseaudio to remove an audible pop that was made each time the sound controller was turned off by tlp (a few seconds after playback stops).

7

Thank you. I will keep an eye on the bug.

I ran an EndeavourOS live ISO, but it had the same sound issue. Being Arch also, I was not surprised.

Fedora ISO doesn’t show the sound card at all. And it won’t install as it doesn’t find the internal disk.

SuSE Tumbleweed doesn’t find the internal disk either.

VOID Linux ISO errors out when trying to enumerate /dev.

So, Arch based distros on the Acer CB is the way to go, for now.

Hopefully a future firmware script update might fix the UFS issues currently present.

Thanks,

K

8

Thanks for the update.

Remember that the audio script won’t work in a live environment.

With regards to Fedora and SuSE, you may add the missing UFS modules manually using dracut, as described here. If I may recall correctly, I didn’t have to do this step for Ubuntu LTS after the firmware update. You might try your luck with Debian 12 or PopOS.

And finally, I find it quite strange that the firmware update was limited to Arch-based (and quite possibly Debian-based) distros. Maybe @MrChromebox can chime in with an explanation.

9

I installed Gecko… and tried the dracut method, but I think I missed the name of the ufs module in openSuSE.

Any idea?

Keith

10

I’m not sure what you mean by this? What firmware? What limitation?

11

Maybe it needs a minimum kernel version? Did you try a beta version of some other distro, like Fedora Rawhide?

12

I was referring to this update:

13

This should work:

echo 'add_dracutmodules+=" ufshcd-pci "' >> /etc/dracut.conf.d
sudo dracut-rebuild
14

I still have no idea what you’re talking about

15

OMNIGUL fails to boot past GRUB unless UFS kernel modules are added manually. Now that I think more about it, this is probably more of a failure by the Linux distros to actually identify the storage type as UFS and include the necessary modules, rather than a limitation of the firmware.

16

ok yes, that sounds right to me. Firmware just loads the on-disk bootloader, anything after that is the responsibility of the OS

17

I got Tumbleweed to work last night, and did indeed use the module you mentioned. It’s a pain to rebuild the kernel on first boot, but I’m getting used to it. BTW, I installed Gecko…which uses Calamares and does know about UFS in the installer. Gecko is tumbleweed anyway. So that is good.

So, Gecko has the same issue as Manjaro. No sound, then I ran the audio script and the sound is garbled.

I prefer tumbleweed to arch, so I’ll keep it in the hope that the audio issues are figured out.

Thanks for your quick response to my email. Much appreciated.

Keith

18

Happy to hear you got Gecko up and running. Let’s just hope that it won’t be long until a fix is found for the sof-rt5682 sound card.

19

I’m using RT5682 + MAX98357A on TigerLake just fine (which is nearly the same in terms of platforms as AlderLake).

Please attach: Debugging | Chrultrabook Docs

20

I have the debug archive, but am not allowed to upload it here.