Describing the problem
So after installing Kubuntu 20.04 as Dual Boot on my Acer Nitro 5, I have problems with the headset sound. When plugging my headphones there is a constant screeching sound, almost similar to a mosquito flying near your ear. I can play normal sounds, but this screeching remains as background. The internal speakers work absolutely fine. And it's not a fault in my headphones (tested two different pairs), since they don't play such sound when booting in Windows.
This seems to be a common issue, since I have found a lot of other posts aksing for help. The reason I am opening a new thread is that so far none of the offered solutions have worked for me. Therefore, I wanted to try my luck here again, I will try to outline my results for the most common solutions.
But first I will probably need to give some specifications for my laptop.
The model is the Acer Nitro 5 AN515-55-73C9 with an Intel i-7 10750H processor. The graphics card is a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, however in Kubuntu I deactivated it using the NVIDIA X Server Settings and switched to the integrated Intel UHD Graphics, since this boosts my battery life from 1.5 hours to 8 hours and I only really need it for some gaming on Windows. The screeching sound does not appear when instead using the NVIDIA graphics card (Perfomance mode in NVIDIA X Server Settings). However, using this setting permanently is not an option for me due to the extremely short battery life. Also, I know from my old laptop that it's possible to not have this screeching sound when using the Intel UHD Graphics since there the problem does not arise when switching to Intel in the NVIDIA X Server Settings. I want to avoid using the RTX 2060 in Kubuntu at all cost, so that's why I am asking for help.
As additional information, I saw in some forum someone recommend to include the output of lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 audio, so here it is, even though I am not sure what this command does, I'm guessing it shows which soundcard is present.
00:1f.3 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH cAVS [8086:06c8]
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:143d]
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
If you need any more information just let me know!
Failed solutions
So first I want to go through the suggestions in this thread: Strange noise in headphones when no sound is played
The person asking the question includes the output of sudo aplay -l, so here you go
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC295 Analog [ALC295 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 9: HDMI 3 [HDMI 3]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 10: HDMI 4 [HDMI 4]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
So the first solution suggests to disable loopback in alsamixer, however, there is no such option available for me:
alsamixer with headphones plugged in
The next solution suggests to enter the commands
echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save_controller
echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save
but this does practically nothing. The sounds stops for a split second but is immidiately back. Also as additional information, the screeching is there both in plugged in and plugged out mode.
The next one suggests to edit the file
sudo nano /usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/intel-audio-powersave
but this file doesn't exist in my system.
So the next solution is one that I have found in a lot of other threads and it seemed to have worked for most people (unfortunately not for me). The idea is the edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf and add the line
options snd-hda-intel model=dell-headset-multi
at the end. For me this changes the volume of the screeching, slightly lowering it, but it's still to loud to overhear. I saw on some website, which I can't find right now (I believe it was some sort of Ubuntu wiki), that one could try different options for the model options. I have found the available options for my sound card here. (From the previous output: my card is a ALC295) As a disclaimer: I have not tried every single option in that list, only the ones which seemed sensible to me (so any which were describing a fix with the headphone jack). I wasn't sure how using a fix for a different sound card (e.g. alc283-sense-combo) would affect my system. So part of my question is, if I can safely use all of those options? Keep in mind, the ones I tried so far did not work.
The next answer asks if tlp is activated. I don't know what this is, but the file /etc/default/tlp they suggest to edit, does not exist, so I guess not.
This pretty much concludes the answers in this thread. Unfortunately I can't provide the links to some solutions because I cannot find them anymore.
One thing I saw somewhere was to disable some power options, in particular to add
options snd-hda-intel power_save=0
to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf, which also didn't help for me.
I saw somewhere that people are experiencing this problem with newer kernel versions. Unfortunately I am a total Ubuntu beginner (as you might have guessed already) so I have no idea about kernels. Since this is a new install of Kubuntu 20.04 I am not even sure if I can switch to an older kernel, let alone how to. But if you think it's worth a try, let me know!
A lot of answers also try to fix the problem using pulseaudio. Running the command pulseaudio in the terminal yields:
E: [pulseaudio] pid.c: Daemon already running.
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: pa_pid_file_create() failed.
As I understood this is due to pulseaudio running already, but running pulseaudio -k ; pulseaudio --start does nothing
Right now these are all the things I can think of. I hope for now this is enough information, but again, if you need more infos just let me know!
I appreciate any help!
