1

Running Ubuntu 18.04.4 on an Acer Swift 5 (SF514-54T)

I was trying to fix the fact that the microphone was not working and now I cannot even have any sound coming out. Instead, the sound settings only show "Dummy Output" instead of a soundcard.

I tried the following, but nothing worked.

acer swift 3: microphone not working with ubuntu 18.04

Built-in microphone not working on Acer Aspire

No sound in Ubuntu 18.04 HP notebook

Kostas
  • 101
  • 8

2 Answers2

3

I had this same problem and followed the instructions provided in this reddit answer: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmint/comments/fltlrl/no_sound_on_acer_swift_3_with_kernel_53/fm4jnqf?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

In short, add the following line to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf:

options snd-hda-intel dmic_detect=0

and then reboot.

The post also provides another line that should enable the microphone, but that didn't work for me.

S. Fenoll
  • 31
  • Thank you! This happened to me before after an update and ended up having to do a completely fresh install, but this has fixed it this time. Legend! – benJ Jan 07 '21 at 21:11
2

It seems that the problem was the update to Ubuntu kernel 5.3.0-42-generic which has been recently reported as a bug.

Reverting to the previous kernel 5.3.0-40-generic should solve the problem.

To see what version kernel you are running type in the terminal:

uname -r

You can boot to the previous kernel by selecting the relevant option in the grub2 boot loader. Once in the grub2 menu, select "Advanced options for Ubuntu" and then choose "5.3.0-40-generic".

If the grub2 menu does not appear, press ESC or (left) SHIFT while booting.

If pressing these keys does not work to bring up the grub2 menu, you need to manually edit the boot loader settings. This can be done by e.g. tweaking the grub.cfg file using a text editor (in this case gedit):

sudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Search for "timeout" and change the following to:

set timeout_style=menu
set timeout=10

and save the grub.cfg file. Next time you boot, the grub2 menu should appear.

I reckon that there must be more elegant solutions until the bug is fixed but, for the moment, this did the trick for me.

Kostas
  • 101
  • 8