Help settings up sound card on Debian stable

[man...@gmail.com]

Hi,

I have been trying to set up a Minisforum HX90[1] with Debian stable
with backports. Most of the stuff works out of the box except sound,
bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. I'll focus on the sound card issue here and use a
new thread for the latter 2 items (which are related to the same
MediaTek module.)

I've enabled backports repo and installed the latest backport kernel.
It looks like the system can detect the device according to inxi output:

```
$ inxi -SMA
System:
Host: debian-hx90 Kernel: 5.16.0-0.bpo.4-amd64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64
Desktop: N/A Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)
Machine:
Type: Desktop Mobo: N/A model: HX90 serial: <superuser required>
UEFI: American Megatrends LLC. v: 5.19 date: 10/11/2021
Audio:
Device-1: AMD Renoir Radeon High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
Device-2: AMD Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio Processor driver: N/A
Device-3: AMD Family 17h HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
Device-4: C-Media Audio Adapter (Unitek Y-247A) type: USB
driver: cmedia_hs100b,snd-usb-audio,usbhid
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.16.0-0.bpo.4-amd64 running: yes
Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes
Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.19 running: yes
```

but note this line: "Device-2: AMD Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio
Processor driver: N/A" which seems to suggest that the driver is not
available. I tried to list devices using "aplay -l" but got no sound
card available:

```
$ aplay -l
aplay: device_list:274: no soundcards found...
```

PulseAudio also reports only the dummy sink is available:

```
$ pactl list sinks
Sink #0
State: SUSPENDED
Name: auto_null
Description: Dummy Output
Driver: module-null-sink.c
Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
Channel Map: front-left,front-right
Owner Module: 12
Mute: no
Volume: front-left: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB, front-right:
65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
balance 0.00
Base Volume: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
Monitor Source: auto_null.monitor
Latency: 0 usec, configured 0 usec
Flags: DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY SET_FORMATS
Properties:
device.description = "Dummy Output"
device.class = "abstract"
device.icon_name = "audio-card"
Formats:
pcm
```

I've googled around and tried to install some firmware including
"firmware-sof-signed" but it didn't help. The "lspci output" looks like:

```
$ sudo lspci -v
[..snip..]

04:00.5 Multimedia controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD]
Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio Processor (rev 01)
Subsystem: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD]
Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio Processor
Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 69, IOMMU group 5
Memory at fca80000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]


Capabilities: [48] Vendor Specific Information: Len=08 <?>

Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3
Capabilities: [64] Express Endpoint, MSI 00

Capabilities: [a0] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
Capabilities: [100] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0001 Rev=1
Len=010 <?>
Kernel modules: snd_pci_acp3x, snd_rn_pci_acp3x


04:00.6 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 17h
(Models 10h-1fh) HD Audio Controller
DeviceName: HD Audio Controller

Subsystem: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Family 17h (Models
10h-1fh) HD Audio Controller
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 74, IOMMU group 5
Memory at fcac0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
Capabilities: [48] Vendor Specific Information: Len=08 <?>
Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3
Capabilities: [64] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [a0] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
Capabilities: [100] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0001 Rev=1
Len=010 <?>
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel

[..snip..]
```

The "lsmod" output seems to show that everything is loaded, but it seems
the acp3x related modules are not in use:
```
$ sudo lsmod | grep snd
snd_usb_audio 356352 2
snd_usbmidi_lib 45056 1 snd_usb_audio
snd_hda_codec_hdmi 73728 1
snd_rawmidi 45056 1 snd_usbmidi_lib
snd_seq_device 16384 1 snd_rawmidi
mc 65536 1 snd_usb_audio
snd_hda_intel 57344 1
snd_intel_dspcfg 28672 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_intel_sdw_acpi 20480 1 snd_intel_dspcfg
snd_hda_codec 176128 2 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel
snd_hda_core 110592 3
snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_hwdep 16384 2 snd_usb_audio,snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm 147456 5
snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_usb_audio,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_core
snd_timer 45056 1 snd_pcm
snd 114688 16
snd_seq_device,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hwdep,snd_hda_intel,snd_usb_audio,snd_usbmidi_lib,snd_hda_codec,snd_timer,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi
snd_rn_pci_acp3x 20480 0
soundcore 16384 1 snd
snd_pci_acp3x 20480 0
usbcore 327680 6
xhci_hcd,snd_usb_audio,usbhid,snd_usbmidi_lib,btusb,xhci_pci
```

I'm not sure what to do about this, and there isn't much result from
Googling that are related to Debian. Any suggestions are appreciated!
And if there's any more info needed I'd like to provide if that helps.

Thanks in advance.

[1] https://store.minisforum.com/products/hx90?variant=40508847128737

[Yvan Masson]

Le 12/04/2022 à 03:48, man...@gmail.com a écrit :
> Hi,
>
> I have been trying to set up a Minisforum HX90[1] with Debian stable
> with backports.  Most of the stuff works out of the box except sound,
> bluetooth, and Wi-Fi.

Hi,

I have no idea of what you could do to make it work on stable, sorry.
But did you try running testing? It would be probably simpler, and
testing generally runs great.

Regards,
Yvan

[Christian Britz]

On 2022-04-13 09:28 UTC+0200, Yvan Masson wrote:

> I have no idea of what you could do to make it work on stable, sorry.
> But did you try running testing? It would be probably simpler, and
> testing generally runs great.

It seems to be more or less consent that you are not advised to run
Debian Testing on a productive system, one of the reasons is security
support. Is this system so new that it requires a kernel from testing?
bullseye-backports has kernel 5.16.12, the kernel in testing is also a
5.16.x release.
It will probably not take too much time until 5.17.x or 5.18.x will
appear in bullseye-backports.

Regards,
Christian

--
http://www.cb-fraggle.de

[man...@gmail.com]

Thanks, and no worries. The reason I haven't tried testing is that this
is a semi-production system and I'd like the base system to be stable.
Also I've seen some success story regarding this type of sound card on
other Linux distributions with a sufficiently recent kernel (5.15-ish),
so I'd like to at least try to make it work which will be a learning
process. In the worst case I may just wait for bookworm to become
stable next year :)

[man...@gmail.com]

Exactly as Christian said. Will like to learn about sound card
configuration in general as well, so any suggestion is appreciated.