Re: [gentoo-user] no sound through headphones (still bad)

[allan gottlieb]

On Sat, Jul 16 2016, Ian Bloss wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 16, 2016 at 8:25 AM allan gottlieb <gottlieb@×××.edu> wrote:
>
>> Hardware: Dell Latitude E7450 laptop
>>
>> Gentoo essentially all stable
>> Gnome / Systemd
>>
>> When I play a movie using totem it sounds fine if no headphones are
>> plugged it.
>>
>> No sound at all with headphones.  I tried a few, one with a microphone
>> several without.
>>
>> The gnome sound settings gui recognizes that the headphones are in but
>> the sound test is silent.  If, with the phones still in, I select the
>> internal speakers, all sounds well.
>>
>> I installed pauvcontrol and selected "Output Devices".
>> When I selected "Speakers" as the port the volume meter moves around
>> normally and the sound is fine.
>> When I selected "Headphones (plugged in)" as the port the volume meter
>> again moves around normally but there is no sound.
>>
>> This laptop dual boots windows.  I played the same movie on windows and
>> sound was normal both with the speakers and the headphones.
>>
>> What should I try next?
>>
>> thanks,
>> allan
>>
>
> check either with alsamixer and make sure the headphone jack isn't muted,
> or look into pulseaudio if you're using that, although I can't help much
> there as I don't use pulse.

I tried alsamixer with interesting results.  I used f3 [playback].

I first unmuted everything and tried to raise the volume of all.
I could raise the volume of all but the first headphone column

The columns from left to right are

Master Headphone Headphone Headphone Speaker PCM Auto-Mute et al
         ^^^^
           |
           could not raise this column
           
When the headphone is plugged in the second column is set to un-mute and
the speaker column is set to mute.  When the headphone is unplugged the
reverse occurs.  All this looks right.  But I can't raise the volume
setting for the second column (I can and did raise columns 3 and 4.

I sure looks like the headphone gets unmuted but is permanently at
volume 0.

Also the gnome volume control (top bar) shows headphone and when I move
its slider it raises/lowers the first column (master) volume.

To answer Alec's questions this is a 3.5mm jack.  Nothing new in dmesg.
sudo lspci | grep -i audio       shows
00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Broadwell-U Audio Controller (rev 09)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP High Definition Audio Controller (rev 03)

I think/hope we are getting close and thank everyone for their help.

allan