Ubuntu 20.04 LTS no sound \on LG Gram 2021 (a lot of troubleshooting attempted)
Solution 1:
same here with 2021 lg gram 17Z90P
sound works with headphone jack.
sound works with hdmi port and the two thunderbolt 4 port.
sound works through bluetooth.
But no sound on the laptops own speaker.
on both kubuntu 20.10 and arch linux
Solution 2:
This bug has been reported to Linux kernel issue tracker.
See Bug 212041 - LG Gram (2021 Tiger Lake) No sound internel speaker and [BUG] LG Gram laptop (2021 Tiger Lake) Internal speaker no sound #2777.
Here are some replies:
plbossart:
then this is indeed a Linux codec driver issue. Something is missing in the configuration of the HDaudio codec to enable speakers.
plbossart:
it could be easy or complicated to fix this
a) it's a simple configuration that's missing and can be fixed by a quirk (there are hundreds in ALSA so chances are there are similar devices with the same quirk)
b) it's more complicated if there are I2S amplifiers connected behind the HDaudio codec, in this case the sequence to program those amplifiers needs to be reverse-engineered. This is what happens on a number of Lenovo devices.
Takashi Iwai:
It's rather the lack of amp initialization, and it's pretty much vendor-specific. You have to figure out it by yourself via trial-and-error (or try asking the vendor).
At first, I'd try different model option values.
Solution 3:
I have an LG Gram 16 2021 model that had the same problem but now sound on the internal speakers is working! I have the system dual booted. I was using windows side and updating it. Then I got a notification to update LG Bios. After doing this, I lost the ability to boot to ubuntu. So I booted off the live Ubuntu usb, picked the "try it" option, installed grub repair. Ran grub repair which said it had some error. Ignored the error. I then shutdown from the live usb ubuntu, removed the usb drive, then started up the system. Grub reappeared, so I picked the uefi option to check the Uefi setting but made no changes then booted into ubuntu. Sound then worked! I shut down completely. Rebooted, it still worked!!
I suspect it was the BIOS update but just wanted to capture all my steps in case it wasn't. I hope this helps others with LG gram 2021s.
In response to Ryans question, I looked further into the update. LG update center installed an Intel chip update. It did not provide a URL for the update but I found the matching number here. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/search.html?ws=text#q=10.1.18460.8229&t=Downloads&layout=table
