No sound with Thinkpad E560 on Jessie

[Geminus]

Dear members of the forum,

I have recently acquired my new Laptop, a Lenovo Edge E560. I am running Jessie (with some packages from testing/backports). Unfortunately I am unable to get any sound. The first indication was that youtube videos run too fast (and varying the speed, it appears) and without sound in iceweasel. In chrome, there isn't even an image, just the clock runs (again too fast).

I guess this is all related to the sound issue. I have tried finding a solution but could not find one. I have followed https://wiki.debian.org/SoundFAQ and https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Sound_Problembehebung/ (german). Here are some outputs you might want, in case you need more please let me know.

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# lspci -v | grep Audio -A 8
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Device 9d70 (rev 21)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device 5048
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 139
	Memory at e1340000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Memory at e1330000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
	Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3
	Capabilities: [60] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
	Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel

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# cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [PCH            ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH
                      HDA Intel PCH at 0xe1340000 irq 139
29 [ThinkPadEC     ]: ThinkPad EC - ThinkPad Console Audio Control
                      ThinkPad Console Audio Control at EC reg 0x30, fw unknown

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# aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav 
Playing WAVE '/usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 48000 Hz, Mono

However, no sound is playing, neither as root nor as user who is in group audio.

Pavucontrol shows a Built-in Audio. During aplay it shows that there is sound playing.

alsamixer is also not on mute: http://imgur.com/a/py7d2

Unfortunately now I do not know how to proceed further. Please advise or ask for any additional output.

Thanks in advance for your time and help!
Geminus

[Ardouos]

Check the BIOS/ EFI. There tend to be settings there which turn the internal speakers off.

Also do you receive sound when you plug in headphones or speakers?

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Have you tried:

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# alsactl init
# alsactl store

[Geminus]

@Ardouos
I just checked and there is no such setting in the BIOS. No sound using headphones either.

@Head_on_a_Stick
I just tried, but to no avail.

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# alsactl init
Found hardware: "HDA-Intel" "Intel ID 2809" "HDA:14f15111,17aa5049,00100101 HDA:80862809,80860101,00100000" "0x17aa" "0x5048"
Hardware is initialized using a generic method

[AlanWalker]

Dear members of the forum,

I have recently acquired my new Laptop, a Lenovo Edge E560. I am running Jessie (with some packages from testing/backports). Unfortunately I am unable to get any sound. ...

May I suggest that you re-install Jessie then, assuming you've regained sound, test sound as you go forward, adding the packages you want, one by one?

If you don't have sound on the reinstall of Jessie, try going backwards: install Wheezy; if there's no sound with Wheezy try casting the net still wider.


HTH,

[sunrat]

This is fairly new hardware with Skylake processor so you may need a newer kernel and firmware to make it run properly.

[pylkko]

most certainly needs a kernel of at least 4.4 or there abouts and also maybe some firmawre packages. even in later versions there are yet things unleft done regarding skylake sound

Skylake Audio Still Being Tuned In Linux 4.6

[oswaldkelso]

I have a Lenovo T520

It was crippled when I got it. The bios locked with a password and even after I got around that I discovered it had a "whitelist in it" This meant it would not even boot when I swapped the wifi card to one not requiring non-free blobs. Basically they lock down the hardware via the bios. In the end I had to install Windows to flash the bios with a modified version that removes the "white list" . Believe me I tried everything to avoid that. Anyway everything now works on it fine even bluetooth and it's a great laptop and I learned to never buy a Lenovo again.

Moral of the story, check if it's crippled with a "whitelist" in the bios. I see the G560 has a whitelist and flashed bios available but no idea if it's similar or suitable

I would also check if Lenovo offer a Suse option on it because if they do you'll find your answer through the Suse solution

[Geminus]

May I suggest that you re-install Jessie then, assuming you've regained sound, test sound as you go forward, adding the packages you want, one by one?

most certainly needs a kernel of at least 4.4 or there abouts and also maybe some firmawre packages. even in later versions there are yet things unleft done regarding skylake sound

I combined your two approaches and reinstalled, but switched to testing (stretch). Sound and watching videos worked without any further ado! Thanks for your help.

As far as I can tell all major problems are resolved now, but one thing that remains (it was already there on jessie) is a sporadic screen flicker. Sometimes it happens once or twice every second, maybe 4-5 times in a row, sometimes only once every few minutes. I have no idea where to start digging to find the cause. So my questions are
1) should I start a new thread for that problem?
2) could you give any advice on what to do next?

Thanks again for the help you already provided!

[Ardouos]

1) should I start a new thread for that problem?

Yes.