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swingcake
Asked: 2018-07-06 07:02:01 +0800 CST

Bang & Olufsen audio issue on HP laptops

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First of all I'd like to start off with the basic information regarding audio for HP laptops which previously shipped with Beats Audio and now with Bang & Olufsen.

  • There is sound crackling in the left earphone when earphones/headphones are connected. This issue already has a solution.
  • The other issue is that the speakers(of the laptop) does not sound full. And some people say that the subwoofer is not working (the pin is not connected). A post on reddit contains the solution, but that is for older devices with Beats Audio, and none exists for the newer ones with Bang & Olufsen I believe.

There have been several questions asked for the latter:

What do I know?
Maybe it can be fixed with HDAJackRetask GUI from alsa-tools-gui package(according to the reddit thread). I don't know the remapping for my particular laptop. There are two front speakers powered from motherboard and two back speakers powered by separate amplifier. The speakers powered by the amplifier don't work.

The closest I've been to it is with this bug report. 2 years and still not a fix by HP. Shame. But there are some workarounds to be found in the thread(also including the mute LED which doesn't work by default). Totally worth having a look.

My personal laptop is HP Pavilion x360 Convertible 14-ba074TU with ALC295.

If someone has any knowledge related to the topic, please share.

sound pulseaudio realtek hp alsa

1 Answers

  1. I think I might have solved it (Bass Speaker visible in ALSAMixer) on my HP Pavilion x360 with the dreaded ALC295 codec.

    Install the alsa-tools package if you haven't already: sudo apt install alsa-tools

    Create this script file at /usr/local/bin/fix_headphones_audio.sh:

    #!/bin/bash
while true; do
    DEVICE=`ls /dev/snd/hwC[[:print:]]*D0 | head -n 1`
    if [ ! -z "$DEVICE" ]; then
        hda-verb "$DEVICE" 0x20 SET_COEF_INDEX 0x67
        hda-verb "$DEVICE" 0x20 SET_PROC_COEF 0x3000
        break
    fi
    sleep 1
done

    Then create the systemd service file at /etc/systemd/system/fix_headphones_audio.service:

    [Unit]
Description=Fix headphones audio after boot & resume.
After=multi-user.target suspend.target hibernate.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/bin/sh '/usr/local/bin/fix_headphones_audio.sh'

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target suspend.target hibernate.target

    After all of this is done, run sudo systemctl start fix_headphones_audio and sudo systemctl enable fix_headphones_audio. Try suspending and resuming your laptop and play something. Audio should no longer be distorted.

    Now, if you were successful in fixing your crackling audio issue, we can move on to enabling the bass speaker:

    Edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa_base.conf and add this line:

    options snd-hda-intel model=alc295-hp-x360

    Run sudo update-initramfs -u to update the initramfs with the new modprobe configuration.

    Reboot your laptop and everything should be working.

    (Crackling sound fix courtesy of Erikas: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ASUS_Zenbook_UX430#Headphones_audio_is_too_low)

    If you found this answer useful, please go to Launchpad and confirm my issue so the developers can fix it upstream: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/1874051

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