[alsa-devel] Spectre x360 fixing the top speakers (again)

[Takashi Iwai]

On Sun, 05 Aug 2018 18:28:57 +0200,
 Alex G.  wrote:
> 
> It's only been since 4.18-rc2 that the speaker issue on the x360 [1]
> was resolved. I didn't even know I had four speakers until seeing that
> bug report. My HP Spectre x360 (13-ae0xx) has the same issue as the
> original x360 with Bang speakers.
> 
> The subsystem PCI ID is different [103c:83b9]. Of the two fixes
> developed in [1], only the mute led fix works when the PCI id is added
> to patch-realtek. If I try to add the full ALC295_FIXUP_HP_X360 fix,
> there's no audio coming out at all.
> 
> One thing I tried was to boot W10 virtual machine and redirect the
> audio PCI device to the VM:
> 0:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio (rev 21)
> It all worked in the VM, but as soon as I shut it down and tried to
> play audio from linux, the top speakers still didn't work. The
> difference being that PAVUcontrol could see a "4.0 output"
> configuration. The same issue: audio sent to the bottom speakers was
> heard, but audio sent to the top speakers was not.
> 
> Since I'm likely going to have to change _everything_ anyway, here's
> what I'm trying to achieve:
> 
> 
> 1) Make the top speakers great again. Whether they produce the same
> sound as the bottom speakers, or have their own audio channel, I don't
> care that much.

Well, "again" -- you have never got it working on Linux, right?

The top speaker thing is likely the missing initialization of I2S amp,
EQ or DRC, which seem to be done via vendor-specific COEF verbs.
The Windows VM work just because these initializations are done in
Windows side.  You'd need to get these init verbs, but it's a tough
issue.  The best would be to get the proper data from the vendor.
Unfortunately HP seems have zero interest in supporting the device on
Linux at all.  Luckily we've got the data kindly from Realtek at the
previous time for one x360 model after Tom's great effort.

Hopefully Kailang (Cc'ed here) may ask his colleagues and get some
info...


> 2) Be able to use the speakers when something is plugged in the
> headphone jack. Right now it's stupid. I try to plug in a microphone
> (with the proper TRRS jack), and the speakers die. I haven't seen this
> before. I was playing with HDA-Analyzer and was able to get speaker
> sounds with a dummy plugged in the jack, so I know it's possible. I
> don't remember how I did it, and it only worked once.

The TRRS handling is again very much vendor-specific, and most likely
one of the existing methods may fit.  Check the headset-related
helpers and callbacks in patch_realtek.c.


Takashi

> 3) (optional) see if there's a way to use the jack as a line in or
> stereo mic in.
> 
> I'm not sure where to start.
> 
> Alex
> 
> [1] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=189331
>