Hi,
I notice a regression report on Bugzilla [1]. Quoting from it:
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 7 running Arch Linux. Linux 6.4 and higher, cause audio distortion. Sometimes, this occurs to the point that nearly nothing is discernible. This carries over to wired headphones. The issue occurs on the entire mainline 6.4.x kernel series and also the 6.4.3 stable and 6.5 RC1 kernel, which are the latest at the time of writing. The issue occurs on both the Arch distributed kernels, and the mainline kernels.
Linux kernels 6.3.x are not affected and neither is the 6.1 LTS kernel series which is what I am temporarily using. On Windows 10/11 too, the audio works as it should. This indicates that my hardware is not at fault. Bluetooth audio is not impacted from my testing, either.
The distortion doesn't start immediately. It either occurs automatically after a random amount of time, or when I increase/decrease the volume, or when I skip forward/backward to a section. In order to stop the distortion, I have to either increase/decrease the volume until it stops, or skip forward/backward until it stops, or restart Pipewire via systemd, however it starts again due to one of the aforementioned reasons.
At the time of this report, I am running Pipewire 0.3.74 and Wireplumber 0.4.14. This also doesn't seem like a Pipewire/Wireplumber issue, since these same versions work fine on the 6.1 LTS kernels without causing any audio distortion.
I wrote about this on the Arch Linux forums, too, and seems like at least two other people are facing this issue. Here's the forum post: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=287068
Furthermore, I filed a bug report on the Arch Linux Bug Reporter, where they suggested that the issue is a kernel regression and should be reported upstream, here. Here's the bug report that I filed on the Arch Linux Bug Reporter for anyone interested: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/79081?project=1&pagenum=10
I have attached the dmesg outputs of the mainline 6.5 RC1 kernel.
Here's some audio related hardware information from my device:
inxi -A
Audio: Device-1: Intel Alder Lake PCH-P High Definition Audio driver: sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl API: ALSA v: k6.5.0-rc1-1-mainline status: kernel-api
pactl info
Server String: /run/user/1000/pulse/native Library Protocol Version: 35 Server Protocol Version: 35 Is Local: yes Client Index: 138 Tile Size: 65472 User Name: tux Host Name: NSA-Terminal-4 Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.74) Server Version: 15.0.0 Default Sample Specification: float32le 2ch 48000Hz Default Channel Map: front-left,front-right Default Sink: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3-platform-skl_hda_dsp_generic.HiFi__hw_sofhdadsp__sink Default Source: alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1f.3-platform-skl_hda_dsp_generic.HiFi__hw_sofhdadsp_6__source Cookie: f9dc:5e7a
I can't figure out why this is happening. Kindly ask for any more information that is necessary. Thank you.
See Bugzilla for the full thread and attached dmesg.
Anyway, I'm adding it to regzbot so that it doesn't fall through cracks unnoticed:
#regzbot introduced: v6.3..v6.4 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217673 #regzbot title: PipeWire + Wireplumber audio distortion on Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 7 #regzbot link: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=287068 #regzbot link: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/79081?project=1&pagenum=10
Thanks.
[1]: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217673