predator g7-593 only using left speaker(ubuntu)

Hello, I recently bought acer predator laptop (G9-593-7757 15,6"/i7-7700/32 GB RAM/512 GB SSD/1 TB HDD/GTX1070) for my studies (computer science) and installed ubuntu 16.10 on it. Now overal it works quite well after the boot system put up a bit of a fight (and well the touchpad keys are still a bit weird) but only the left speaker is working. Now if I understand correctly I should have a left-right and subwoofer installed, correct? But the only sound comes from the left speaker. I have vertified that the right speaker is in fact not muted and it isn't. I know that the boot sound moves from side to side suggesting that all speakers work.

After a bit of toying around online I got the following for my /etc/pulse/daemon.conf

# This file is part of PulseAudio.
#
# PulseAudio is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# PulseAudio is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
# General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
# along with PulseAudio; if not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

## Configuration file for the PulseAudio daemon. See pulse-daemon.conf(5) for
## more information. Default values are commented out.  Use either ; or # for
## commenting.

; daemonize = no
; fail = yes
; allow-module-loading = yes
; allow-exit = yes
; use-pid-file = yes
; system-instance = no
; local-server-type = user
; enable-shm = yes
; shm-size-bytes = 0 # setting this 0 will use the system-default, usually 64 MiB
; lock-memory = no
; cpu-limit = no

; high-priority = yes
; nice-level = -11

; realtime-scheduling = yes
; realtime-priority = 5

; exit-idle-time = 20
; scache-idle-time = 20

; dl-search-path = (depends on architecture)

; load-default-script-file = yes
; default-script-file = /etc/pulse/default.pa

; log-target = auto
; log-level = notice
; log-meta = no
; log-time = no
; log-backtrace = 0

; resample-method = speex-float-1
; enable-remixing = yes
; enable-lfe-remixing = yes
; lfe-crossover-freq = 0

flat-volumes = no

; rlimit-fsize = -1
; rlimit-data = -1
; rlimit-stack = -1
; rlimit-core = -1
; rlimit-as = -1
; rlimit-rss = -1
; rlimit-nproc = -1
; rlimit-nofile = 256
; rlimit-memlock = -1
; rlimit-locks = -1
; rlimit-sigpending = -1
; rlimit-msgqueue = -1
; rlimit-nice = 31
; rlimit-rtprio = 9
; rlimit-rttime = 200000

; default-sample-format = s16le
; default-sample-rate = 44100
; alternate-sample-rate = 48000
;default-sample-channels = 3
;default-channel-map = lfe,right,left 

; default-fragments = 3
; default-fragment-size-msec = 25
;evil hobitses want to take the precious
; enable-deferred-volume = yes
deferred-volume-safety-margin-usec = 1
; deferred-volume-extra-delay-usec = 0

But this did not work. Anybody know how to fix this?

Accepted answers

All comments

beststevie

it's quite a longer time ago, that I have beenn working on this problem. The result is, only external speakers via HMDI are working fine for me.

After all workarounds I tried:

- speaker is not muted, just not existing in the driver (no botton in Alsa and so on)

- this is intel display audio not realtek driver (I think that's the probllem)

- a working driver must be released, otherwise not help

thijser

So after looking around online and about 6 hours of debuging it looks like a large number of acer laptops have a problem where only 1 audio output works on several linux versions, if you still suffer from this problem could you please notify pulseaudio of this here possibly adding in your own information or at least noting that you are also affected by this bug?

beststevie

Why do you think Pulsaudio can change anything if the Intel Display Driver is not working correctly?

If you did some of the workarounds with Pulsaudio you may have discovered, that this button for the missing speakers is also missing because driver cannot handle it correctly.

beststevie

I do not really remember but I think I've read an former post, which said, that one of the Predator Laptops was delivered with a Linux distributuion.

Maybe Acer could give us this driver without any further support? Or maybe it has had the same fault.

thijser

It sounds like you also have relevant information, this is a problem that occurs with the ubuntu sound system (and it seems other linux systems as well) so I put the bug under pulseaudio, if you think some other package is involved could you comment it under the bug report? We can always migrate it and this will hopefully place the discussion somewhere in the view of people who do work with the ubuntu sound system.

beststevie

the result of my work on this problem is....use an external Monitor via HMDI or Loudspeakers. Works Great.

Intel is known not to present any Drivers for the Graphics to the Linux Community (that seems to be the root cause for this problem) for almost 3 years.

thijser

Actually intel does provide several drivers for linux (for example).

However if intel does not provide the drivers then that just means that the pulseaudio and alsa packages have to do more work and that it's a problem that should be handled by the people on the above link.

ocumo

I have a Predator 17 G9-791, running Kubuntu 17.04, also affected by this bug ever since I installed Kubuntu 16.04 in dual boot, a couple of years ago.

I would like to also contribute, but on the posts that refer a bug report, there is no link, at least it's not visible for me in Firefox in any way. I see some "link" icon, but it doesn't work.

Could someone please put a link in a clear way to the bug report or whatever references to this problem?

Thanks!

ocumo

UPDATE:

searching in Internet, I found this bug report in Launchpad:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/1672822

kramadhari

could some one help me with steps to install ubuntu 16.04 along side windows 10...?Struggling for couple of days now

CleverSageLife

THIS WAS CONFIRMED TO WORK ON 06/23/2018 ON LINUX MINT 18.3

My Acer Predator 15 G9-593-72VT has:

Card: HDA Intel PCH

Chip: Realtek ALC255

FIXING IT BY SETTING THE PINS AKA JACK RETASKING):

STEP 1: INSTALL THE FOLLOWING SUITE OF APPS:

sudo apt-get install alsa-tools-gui

STEP 2: RUN THIS PARTICULAR APP FROM THE SUITE AT THE TERMINAL:

hdajackretask

STEP 3: CHECK THE FOLLOWING BOX:

show unconnected pins

STEP 4: SET THE PINS AS FOLLOWS:

0x14 to "Internal Speaker" (do NOT check the box for override)

0x17 to "Internal Speaker LFE" (check the box for override)

0x1b to "Internal Speaker (Back)" (check the box for override)

STEP 5: TEST IT

(play a song or stream a video?)

STEP 6: IF THE TEST SUCCEEDS, CLICK BUTTON:

Install Boot Override

(you will need to put in an admin password)

STEP 7: REBOOT

See if the settings stuck after a restart.

At any time, if something goes wonky, restart the computer, and try again. I found that sometimes the sound quits and freezes while applying different configs, but a restart resets it back to normal.