linux mint 18.1 audio problem

Question

I have linux mint 18.1 and Windows 10 on my laptop, both are fresh installed. Although the sound works fine on windows. Unfortunately, I encounter some problems with mint.

The problems on Linux mint 18.1:

1. The sound come out from front-left speaker only.
2. When using headphone, the audio keep coming out from the spekaer but nothing can be heard from the headphone.

UPDATE 1: Right after I posted this question, I have rebooted my laptop and signed back in. Now the problem get worse, No sound at all, neither from speaker nor from the headphone.

UPDATE 2: I rebooted again. Now BOTH speaker works. But when I plug the headphone, the sound still coming out from the speaker instead of the headphone. I really have no idea what's going on here.

Laptop Specs:

Dell Inspiron 14 7460    
Display : 14.0-inch FHD (1920x1080) IPS Truelife LED-Backlit Display
Processor : 7th Generation Intel® Core™ i5-7200U Processor
Memory : 8GB DDR4 2133 MHz
Hard Drive : 1 TB 5400 rpm SATA HDD
Graphics : nVidia GeForce 940MX 2GB GDDR5
Optical Drive : N/A
Operating System : Windows 10 Home 64-bit English
Networking : 802.11ac dan Bluetooth 4.2, Dual Band 2.4 & 5 GHz, 1×1
Keyboard : Non-Backlight keyboard
Audio : 2 tuned speakers with Waves MaxxAudio® Pro

lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 5904 (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 5916 (rev 02)
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Skylake Processor Thermal Subsystem (rev 02)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 21)
00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Thermal subsystem (rev 21)
00:15.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller (rev 21)
00:15.1 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller (rev 21)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP CSME HECI (rev 21)
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 21)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9d10 (rev f1)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port (rev f1)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port (rev f1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9d58 (rev 21)
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PMC (rev 21)
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Device 9d71 (rev 21)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SMBus (rev 21)
01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM108M [GeForce 940MX] (rev a2)
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 3165 (rev 79)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)

speaker-test -s1 output:

speaker-test 1.1.0

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 1 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 192 to 2097152
Period size range from 64 to 699051
Using max buffer size 2097152
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 524288
was set buffer_size = 2097152
  - Front Left

speaker-test -s2 output:

speaker-test 1.1.0

Invalid parameter for -s option.

Sound settings screen shot:

Pavucontrol screen shot:

Alsamixer screenshot:

UPDATE 3: Additional screen shots from pavucontrol:

pacmd list-cards output:

card(s) available.
    index: 0
    name: <alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1f.3>
    driver: <module-alsa-card.c>
    owner module: 6
    properties:
        alsa.card = "0"
        alsa.card_name = "HDA Intel PCH"
        alsa.long_card_name = "HDA Intel PCH at 0xdf328000 irq 282"
        alsa.driver_name = "snd_hda_intel"
        device.bus_path = "pci-0000:00:1f.3"
        sysfs.path = "/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.3/sound/card0"
        device.bus = "pci"
        device.vendor.id = "8086"
        device.vendor.name = "Intel Corporation"
        device.product.id = "9d71"
        device.form_factor = "internal"
        device.string = "0"
        device.description = "Built-in Audio"
        module-udev-detect.discovered = "1"
        device.icon_name = "audio-card-pci"
    profiles:
        input:analog-stereo: Analog Stereo Input (priority 60, available: unknown)
        output:analog-stereo: Analog Stereo Output (priority 6000, available: unknown)
        output:analog-stereo+input:analog-stereo: Analog Stereo Duplex (priority 6060, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-stereo: Digital Stereo (HDMI) Output (priority 5400, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-stereo+input:analog-stereo: Digital Stereo (HDMI) Output + Analog Stereo Input (priority 5460, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-surround: Digital Surround 5.1 (HDMI) Output (priority 300, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-surround+input:analog-stereo: Digital Surround 5.1 (HDMI) Output + Analog Stereo Input (priority 360, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-surround71: Digital Surround 7.1 (HDMI) Output (priority 300, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-surround71+input:analog-stereo: Digital Surround 7.1 (HDMI) Output + Analog Stereo Input (priority 360, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-stereo-extra1: Digital Stereo (HDMI 2) Output (priority 5200, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-stereo-extra1+input:analog-stereo: Digital Stereo (HDMI 2) Output + Analog Stereo Input (priority 5260, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-surround-extra1: Digital Surround 5.1 (HDMI 2) Output (priority 100, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-surround-extra1+input:analog-stereo: Digital Surround 5.1 (HDMI 2) Output + Analog Stereo Input (priority 160, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-surround71-extra1: Digital Surround 7.1 (HDMI 2) Output (priority 100, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-surround71-extra1+input:analog-stereo: Digital Surround 7.1 (HDMI 2) Output + Analog Stereo Input (priority 160, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-stereo-extra2: Digital Stereo (HDMI 3) Output (priority 5200, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-stereo-extra2+input:analog-stereo: Digital Stereo (HDMI 3) Output + Analog Stereo Input (priority 5260, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-surround-extra2: Digital Surround 5.1 (HDMI 3) Output (priority 100, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-surround-extra2+input:analog-stereo: Digital Surround 5.1 (HDMI 3) Output + Analog Stereo Input (priority 160, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-surround71-extra2: Digital Surround 7.1 (HDMI 3) Output (priority 100, available: unknown)
        output:hdmi-surround71-extra2+input:analog-stereo: Digital Surround 7.1 (HDMI 3) Output + Analog Stereo Input (priority 160, available: unknown)
        off: Off (priority 0, available: unknown)
    active profile: <output:analog-stereo+input:analog-stereo>
    sinks:
        alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo/#0: Built-in Audio Analog Stereo
    sources:
        alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo.monitor/#0: Monitor of Built-in Audio Analog Stereo
        alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo/#1: Built-in Audio Analog Stereo
    ports:
        analog-input-internal-mic: Internal Microphone (priority 8900, latency offset 0 usec, available: unknown)
            properties:
                device.icon_name = "audio-input-microphone"
        analog-input-headphone-mic: Microphone (priority 8700, latency offset 0 usec, available: no)
            properties:
                device.icon_name = "audio-input-microphone"
        analog-input-headset-mic: Headset Microphone (priority 8700, latency offset 0 usec, available: no)
            properties:
                device.icon_name = "audio-input-microphone"
        analog-output-speaker: Speakers (priority 10000, latency offset 0 usec, available: unknown)
            properties:
                device.icon_name = "audio-speakers"
        analog-output-headphones: Headphones (priority 9000, latency offset 0 usec, available: no)
            properties:
                device.icon_name = "audio-headphones"
        hdmi-output-0: HDMI / DisplayPort (priority 5900, latency offset 0 usec, available: yes)
            properties:
                device.icon_name = "video-display"
        hdmi-output-1: HDMI / DisplayPort 2 (priority 5800, latency offset 0 usec, available: yes)
            properties:
                device.icon_name = "video-display"
        hdmi-output-2: HDMI / DisplayPort 3 (priority 5700, latency offset 0 usec, available: yes)
            properties:
                device.icon_name = "video-display"

Anyone have similar problem with me? I really appreciate some helps, clues and advices. Thank you.

Solution

Apparently, upgrading my kernel to 4.4 fix the problem.

Comments

[dirkt]

(1) As you can see in Alsamixer, your Headphone is muted ("MM" instead of "OO" at bottom), and the volume is set to zero. Unmute and set volume to max. (2) When you plug in the headphone, this is detected by the soundcard hardware and should cause a switch to headphone instead of speakers. With Intel soundcard hardware, this should normally work out of the box. Debugging that is a bit fiddly, so let's hope unmuting etc. already solves the problem.

[under5hell]

@dirkt thanks for pointing that out. Unfortunately, after I changed the headphone settings to max, both speaker and headphone now stop working. Even after restart. Also, The sound setting now showing dummy output.

[dirkt]

Huh. What profiles are available besides "Analog Stereo Duplex" in the pavucontrol Configuration tab? Can you enable it again by selecting a configuration? What ports are availabe besides "Speakers"? If nothing works, please do a pacmd list-cards and edit question with output.

[under5hell]

@dirkt I have updated my question with pavucontrol screenshots (profiles and port), and also with pacmd list-cards output. I hope it would help.

[under5hell]

@dirkt It still saying "the headphone is unplugged".