[BUG] Internal Mic not working - Dell Precision

[gravit8n]

Describe the bug
After upgrading to the Linux image 6.11.0-17 from 6.8.0.52 on Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS, the microphone on my DELL Precision 5690 stopped working. The microphone appears to receive a wrong signal in the audio settings (or pavucontrol), and the signal fluctuates continuously. When I attempt to record, a crackling sound is heard.

Capture : https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6a08441d-7fdc-42d2-b2df-3c9f438da9ea

This issue is not new; it has been happening with some kernel since at least 6.8.0.3x. Multiple users have reported similar issues for Dell Precision in various forums: link to forum post or [here](https://github.com/intel/ipu6-drivers/
issues/228#issuecomment-2673246547).

==========

Update 2025/02/25: The issue seems to come from the microphone with the F4 key on the keyboard (mute/unmute) When I switch from secondary to primary F keys, the microphone behavior changes and the microphone works, even if the microphone is not working before...

==========

To Reproduce
Can not reproduce, it depends of the kernel and packages.

Reproduction Rate
All the time.
It worked sometimes with the kernel 6.8.0.48, 6.8.0.52, but never with 6.11.0-17 .

Expected behavior
The microphone should work correctly, and audio sinks should be active and capable of outputting sound. No problem on Windows.

Impact
It's not possible to hold a conference or a remote meeting.

Environment

• Kernel: 6.11.0-17
• SOF firmware version: 2.11.1.1
• SOF topology : ABI 3:29:1
• Kernel ABI 3:23:1
• Firmware file: intel/sof-ipc4/mtl/sof-mtl.ri
• Firmware lib path: intel/sof-ipc4-lib/mtl
• Topology file: intel/sof-ace-tplg/sof-mtl-rt713-l0-rt1316-l12-rt1713-l3.tplg
• Distribution: Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS
• PulseAudio : 16.1
• PipeWire version: 1.0.5
• pipewire-pulse : 1.0.5-1ubuntu2
• Hardware: DELL Precision 5690 with Meteor Lake-P HD Audio Controller

What I’ve tried so far:

• Purging and reinstalling pulseaudio, pipeWire, pipewire-pulse, linux-firmware, ubuntu-drivers-common, firmware-sof-signed, alsa-utils, linux-image-6.11.0-17-generic, linux-image-generic-hwe-24.04, ...
• Resetting ~/.config/pulse and ~/.config/pipewire directories.
• Installing BIOS and firmware updates and experimenting with older kernel versions ( linux-image-6.8.0-52-generic - but not working)

Screenshots or console output
```
$ lspci | grep -i audio
00:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P HD Audio Controller (rev 20)
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation Device 22be (rev a1)
```

```
$ cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0x7d000000 irq 17
1 [sofsoundwire ]: sof-soundwire - sof-soundwire
DellInc.-Precision5690--02RYDD
```

```
$ arecord -l
**** Liste des périphériques matériels CAPTURE ****
carte 1 : sofsoundwire [sof-soundwire], périphérique 1 : Jack In () []
Sous-périphériques : 1/1
Sous-périphérique #0 : subdevice #0
carte 1 : sofsoundwire [sof-soundwire], périphérique 3 : Amp feedback () []
Sous-périphériques : 1/1
Sous-périphérique #0 : subdevice #0
carte 1 : sofsoundwire [sof-soundwire], périphérique 4 : Microphone (*) []
Sous-périphériques : 1/1
Sous-périphérique #0 : subdevice #0
```

```
$ pactl list short sources
48 alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3-platform-sof_sdw.HiFi__hw_sofsoundwire_7__sink.monitor PipeWire s32le 2ch 48000Hz SUSPENDED
49 alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3-platform-sof_sdw.HiFi__hw_sofsoundwire_6__sink.monitor PipeWire s32le 2ch 48000Hz SUSPENDED
50 alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3-platform-sof_sdw.HiFi__hw_sofsoundwire_5__sink.monitor PipeWire s32le 2ch 48000Hz SUSPENDED
51 alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3-platform-sof_sdw.HiFi__hw_sofsoundwire__sink.monitor PipeWire s32le 2ch 48000Hz SUSPENDED
52 alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3-platform-sof_sdw.HiFi__hw_sofsoundwire_2__sink.monitor PipeWire s32le 2ch 48000Hz SUSPENDED
53 alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1f.3-platform-sof_sdw.HiFi__hw_sofsoundwire_1__source PipeWire s32le 2ch 48000Hz SUSPENDED
54 alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1f.3-platform-sof_sdw.HiFi__hw_sofsoundwire_4__source PipeWire s32le 2ch 48000Hz SUSPENDED
```

```
$ systemctl --user unmask pipewire.service
systemctl --user unmask pipewire-pulse.service
systemctl --user enable --now pipewire pipewire-pulse
(base) glion@chronop5690:~$ systemctl --user status pipewire pipewire-pulse
● pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimedia Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Fri 2025-02-21 21:55:16 CET; 13h ago
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire.socket
Main PID: 19441 (pipewire)
Tasks: 3 (limit: 76244)
Memory: 9.8M (peak: 10.8M)
CPU: 1.209s
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pipewire.service
└─19441 /usr/bin/pipewire

févr. 21 21:55:16 chronop5690 systemd[3113]: Started pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimedia Service.
févr. 21 21:55:16 chronop5690 pipewire[19441]: mod.jackdbus-detect: Failed to receive jackdbus reply: org.freedesktop.>

● pipewire-pulse.service - PipeWire PulseAudio
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire-pulse.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Fri 2025-02-21 21:50:39 CET; 13h ago
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire-pulse.socket
Main PID: 19047 (pipewire-pulse)
Tasks: 3 (limit: 76244)
Memory: 14.1M (peak: 15.5M)
CPU: 870ms
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pipewire-pulse.service
└─19047 /usr/bin/pipewire-pulse

févr. 21 21:50:39 chronop5690 systemd[3113]: Started pipewire-pulse.service - PipeWire PulseAudio.
```

log.mic.debug.txt

[lgirdwood]

Update 2025/02/25: The issue seems to come from the microphone with the F4 key on the keyboard (mute/unmute) When I switch from secondary to primary F keys, the microphone behavior changes and the microphone works, even if the microphone is not working before...

This could be a HW configured Microphone mute, it may be routed to the soundiwre codec directly (where the SDW codec will mute/unmute in HW) .

[abonislawski]

@gravit8n looks like we can close it?

[gravit8n]

@gravit8n looks like we can close it?

Not really.

Update 2022/03/02: The problem reappeared after a week of normal usage.
It happened after switching to Windows. However, the usual method of toggling the Fn keys between primary and secondary functions did not work this time.
I tried reinstalling all relevant packages (PulseAudio, PipeWire, ALSA, etc.) without success.
I then went into the BIOS to disable the microphone and observe Ubuntu's behavior with the microphone turned off. After rebooting, the microphone worked normally using the primary Fn key… yet in the BIOS, the microphone was still disabled.

[lgirdwood]

I then went into the BIOS to disable the microphone and observe Ubuntu's behavior with the microphone turned off. After rebooting, the microphone worked normally using the primary Fn key… yet in the BIOS, the microphone was still disabled.

This looks like a board integration issue here and is probably out of scope for the SOF project since we have no access to how the mic mute HW is wired up on this device.

[wszypelt]

@gravit8n was the issue fixed?

[gravit8n]

Not really fixed. I haven't had any issues since I had to disable the microphone in the UEFI in order for it to work on Ubuntu. But by doing that, I can no longer use it on Windows because it sees it as disabled. I contacted DELL, but I haven't received a response so far.

[abonislawski]

Closing this issue as it is related to OEM. Please update us if you receive any information from Dell.

[julienbaley]

@gravit8n thanks at least for the workaround (BIOS disabling), this worked for me :)
(now if I could solve the camera not working, too...)

[NinjaTuna007]

Adding a detailed reproduction + a key finding for this issue (same machine as OP: Dell Precision 5690).

System

• Dell Precision 5690 (board 088TDK), Core Ultra 7 165H (Meteor Lake-P), BIOS 1.23.0
• Kernel 6.14.0-37-generic (Ubuntu 24.04 HWE)
• Card: sof-soundwire, topology sof-mtl-rt713-l0-rt1316-l12-rt1713-l3.tplg
• SoundWire peripherals: 025d:0713, 2x 025d:1316, 025d:1713 (DMIC)
• Reproduced on SOF firmware 2.13.0.1 and 2.14.1.1 (fw-bin 2025.05.1) — both affected
• Windows on the same machine: microphone always works (hardware is healthy)

Symptom
Internal DMIC capture intermittently produces a full-scale impulse train instead of audio: peaks pinned at 32768, 300–3000 large discontinuities/sec (|sample-to-sample delta| > 8000). Affects PipeWire and direct arecord from hw:X,4 equally, in both S16_LE and S32_LE (hw caps are fixed 48 kHz/2ch). In one instance (captured right after a suspend/resume while in the failed state) the corruption was exactly periodic: ~22 glitches/sec = one per ~2180-sample period, i.e. one glitch per DMA period — looks like a clock/sample-slip.

Key finding: the failed state lives in codec/bus hardware state and survives everything except a cold power-off

Once the capture path enters the failed state, it persists across, in increasing order of teardown depth:

1. Stream close/reopen (all clients)
2. suspend/resume (s2idle)
3. Warm reboot
4. Full module chain reload: modprobe -r of snd_sof_pci_intel_mtl, snd_soc_sof_sdw, all snd_soc_rt71x/rt1316 codec drivers, soundwire_intel/cadence/generic_allocation/bus, regmap_sdw(mbq), all snd_sof* — then modprobe back. The card re-appears and DSP re-boots firmware, but capture is still corrupted.

A cold power-off (poweroff, 10s, power on) reliably restores clean capture. This explains the widely-reported "mic works or not depending on kernel version" confusion on these machines: kernel updates always warm-reboot, carrying the bad state — the correlation with kernel versions is (at least partly) spurious.

Conversely, a working mic can flip to the failed state at runtime on an audio topology reconfiguration — in my reproduction, unplugging a USB audio device (which made PipeWire re-open the DMIC stream) flipped a working mic to the failed state, where it then stuck.

Other observations

• soundwire sdw:0:x:025d:xxxx: PARITY error detected before INT mask is enabled appears at boot on both good and bad boots — appears to be a red herring.
• After modprobe -r snd_sof_pci_intel_mtl + reload (without removing the soundwire/codec modules), the machine driver fails to re-probe: sof_sdw: probe with driver sof_sdw failed with error -12; a bind retry via sysfs returns EIO. Only the full chain removal above re-creates the card.
• Mic-mute hotkey toggling (mentioned earlier in this thread) did not affect the state here.

Happy to provide alsa-info output, sof-logger traces, or test patches — this reproduces reliably enough here to bisect behaviors (the failed state can be entered by audio-device hotplug and cleared by cold boot).

Logs

• alsa-info (captured in the working state, right after a cold boot): https://gist.github.com/NinjaTuna007/03fdf828bb2e8487644295d6a8fa2c4e
• Can capture and share the same in the failed state next time it triggers, on request.

[NinjaTuna007]

Following up on my comment above: since this issue is closed and the failure mode I'm seeing is materially different from the OP's (mute-key has no effect, no BIOS changes, failed state survives warm reboot / full driver reload and clears only on cold power-off), I've filed it separately with full details: thesofproject/linux#5841