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Dmitriy Vinokurov
Asked: 2019-04-20 05:44:28 +0800 CST

Dell Vostro 14 5480 very low volume

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I've bought Dell Vostro 14 5480 with preinstalled Ubuntu 14.04, reinstalled it to newer 18.10 and faced unpleasant issue - very low volume with bad quality on max settings. First time I see such thing on laptop with Linux and I'm very disappointed. If I plug in headphones - it is ok, good quality, good volume.

Here is alsamixer screenshot - seems that everything related is on max settings:

Alsamixer screenshot

sound dell dell-vostro

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You're not going to like this as the workaround below allows you to get good sound from your speakers by allowing the subwoofer, but will disable your headphones:

    :-(

    1. Install alsa tools:

      sudo apt-get install alsa-tools alsa-tools-gui

    2. Open a terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T and type:

      hdajackretask

    3. In the window that opens, select the codec Realtek ALC290

    4. On the left side of the window find Headphone, Left side
    5. Check Override
    6. Select Internal speaker(LFE)

    7. Stop PulseAudio because if don't, applying settings will fail because of device busy (at least it is so for 19.04)

      systemctl --user stop pulseaudio.socket
systemctl --user stop pulseaudio.service

    8. Click Apply now

    9. Start PulseAudio again

      systemctl --user start pulseaudio.socket
systemctl --user start pulseaudio.service`
    10. Test your sound.
    11. If all is well, press Install boot override
    12. reboot your system.

    If you want to get headphones back, go back to step 2 and:

    • Uncheck Override in step 5

      or

    • Click Remove boot override.

    Source

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  2. If you are using the Intel audio SOF driver then you cannot use the hdajackretask to tune pins in order to increase the volume. (hdajackretask works only with legacy intel audio driver).

    So, for the Intel audio SOF driver: Just start "alsamixer" with sudo and you'll see much more volume controls comparing to what you can see if you run it under the non-root user. Increase the volume of (most of) these levels like Headphone, Speaker, PGA, and the speakers' volume should become louder.

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