On Fri, 12 Sep 2025 13:22:04 +0100
fraser via Dng <dng@???> wrote:

> I know this has been 'discussed' on dev1glaxy, but I have not yet
> found a solution to this problem and I've been working on it for
> several days solid, although the problem behaviour is a few months
> old.

A suggested  short test;
     less /proc/asound/cards
If 0 = HDMI <- possible problem.
   1 = Generic

There is a race problem on bootup in daedalus and sometimes the cards
order is is swapped with the result that sound sometimes works/sometimes
doesn't.

You can fix this by specifying Card 1 as default in (system)
/etc/asound.conf or (user) ~/.asoundrc

I've always used alsa for sound and this worked for me on various PCs
when GPU's were installed with "HDMI" capacity.

I've also found that having a USB sound device as a third source can
result in intermittent sound. This awareness came about while
developing a way go listen to private stuff(headphones), but using the
default speakers to share sounds/podcasts/music. In my case it is
easy to use vlan GUi "hardware" as the switcher.





>
> Background:
> Since the last 2 or 3 kernel upgrades, the audio has stopped working,
> unpredictably and starts working, unpredictably. It's not failing
> hardware: two of the laptops fail and then resume at the same time,
> side by side. If it helps, one of them (a Lenovo Thinkpad)
> occasionally screams in pain. Sometimes a fix survives a reboot,
> sometimes not.
>
> I have removed, purged, reinstalled alsa, pulseaudio, pipewire,
> upgraded all the firmware, reinstalled chimaera and upgrading in
> sequence, installing from backports in almost every combination but
> the behaviour is the same unpredictable fail/work/fail/work.
>
> The only reliable solution that I have found for the Dell Precision
> 6800M is to re-format and do a clean install of chimaera. The sound
> works reliably, but any upgrading to daedalus results in the
> fail/work behaviour, and doesn't disappear on a subsequent upgrade to
> excalibur. I have reinstalled chimaera four times in the last 36
> hours
>
> I am running a default xfce4 chimaera on the 6800M, but this is
> clearly only a temporary fix. I am considering moving this host over
> to Xubuntu in the hope it can find some Dell drivers, but I'd prefer
> to stick with Devuan. Ideally, I'd prefer to lose pulseaudio, but
> as it's working on a default install, I'm reluctant to try.
>
> Here is the rsyslog output for the latest episode, just now:
>
> Sep 12 13:15:34 Precision kernel: [ 8668.164009] snd_hda_intel
> 0000:00:1b.0: azx_get_response timeout, switching to polling mode:
> last cmd=0x0023a04f Sep 12 13:15:35 Precision kernel: [ 8669.168060]
> snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: No response from codec, disabling MSI:
> last cmd=0x0023a04f Sep 12 13:15:36 Precision kernel: [ 8670.176060]
> snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: azx_get_response timeout, switching to
> single_cmd mode: last cmd=0x0023a04f Sep 12 13:15:36 Precision
> kernel: [ 8670.176229] azx_single_wait_for_response: 6 callbacks
> suppressed Sep 12 13:15:37 Precision pulseaudio[1842]:
> [alsa-sink-ALC3226 Analog] alsa-mixer.c: Failed to set switch of
> 'Speaker': Input/output error
>
> Any pointers would be welcome.
>
> Best, fraser
>
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