New HP Spectre 360 13" No Sound coming from speakers

My Christmas present HP Spectre 360 custom ordered has arrived. The representative helping me knew I would only order if Linux (Zorin 16 Pro) could be installed. She assured me, no problem. It is gorgeous and loaded with features. The problem is that there is NO Sound coming from speakers. They are Bang Olufsen. I have checked Its FOSS forums and Ubuntu forums and also Zorin forums and come up empty. I have about 25 days left to make sure it works for me and return it if it does not. This computer will replace my iPad. This is also the 4th device that has Zorin 16 Pro installed. The others work great (even my Macbook Air 2013) Thank you in advance!!

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Hello @Jeanene and welcome to the forums!
When you boot into Zorin, does it show you that your speakers are working normally but with no sound coming out of them?
If that is the case, then you might want to un-zero the volume from the ALSA mixer, which is the backbone of the Pulse Sound that runs on modern Linux distros. You can do that by going to your software center and spotting the QasMixer app. One you install it, run it and raise the zeroed out sliders and test the sound.

Please let me know how that goes!

Thank you for the quick response! Sadly, it did not work.
I am not sure how to get to the “Pulse setting” but I did install the QasMixer app and adjust it.
On my sound setting, it say “Dummy Output”.
Is this my problem?

Hey again, @Jeanene!
There’s quite a few people who had issue with the Spectre. Let’s see if this fixes it for you (the issue is the wrongly assigned channel for audio output).
Open up a terminal and shoot the following commands:

sudo apt install alsa-tools

This will install the commands necessary to shift the channels.
Then, hit the following:

sudo hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x01 SET_GPIO_DIR 0x01
sudo hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x01 SET_GPIO_MASK 0x01
sudo hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x01 SET_GPIO_DATA 0x01
sudo hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x01 SET_GPIO_DATA 0x00

Followed by the Enter key at the end of each line.
Once done, perform a:

pulseaudio -k
pulseaudio --start

Then test some audio file and check if you’re getting sound. Worst case, reboot and check again.

Please let me know how it goes. :slight_smile:

How it went: At the end of ever “sudo” entry it said open: No such file or directory.
then after the pulseaudio commands it said…pid.c: Daemon already running
main.c: pa_pid_file_create() failed.
the last two lines in red.
I tested fr sound and again nothing :frowning:

Are there instructions on how to check if Pulse Audio is actually installed?
Thank you in advance!

Hello @Jeanene!
I apologize for my delay. Festive seasons tend to strip what little time I have.
Pulse Audio is the standard that all Linux distros use for the past several years. I do find it interesting that there is no dev file for your sound chip. Let’s try a different approach. Open up a terminal and type in the following:

sudo echo "options snd-hda-intel index=1,0" >> /etc/modprobe.d/50-alsa.conf
echo "defaults.pcm.device 3" >> ~/.asoundrc

Then type in, and please let me know of the output of:

cat /etc/modprobe.d/50-alsa.conf

Then try a reboot and check if that helps.

Thank you so much for reaching out again to help me!!! Merry Christmas!!!

After typing the first command it replied:

command ‘bash:’ not found, did you mean:
command ‘bash’ from deb bash (5.0-6ubuntu1.1)
Try: sudo apt install

??? what do I type in-place of deb name?

After more research and watching tutorials…I will try Manjaro KDE Plasma. Somewhere in the settings I saw HP device settings. That may solve my problems, and in addition it looks beautiful :slight_smile:

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That is… interesting! Both sudo and echo commands come in as standard on Ubuntu. Did you try to copy-paste them directly from the code above?

And Merry Christmas to you too!
Manjaro can be a good option as it uses more recent versions of the Kernel and the modules.
Please let me know how it goes! :slight_smile: