Ubuntu – Poor sound quality on a Dell XPS 15 (L502x)

12.04dellsoundxps

I have a problem with my sound on my Dell XPS 15. First, when I had Windows 7, my sound was pretty good (I have a JBL 2.1 speaker system with Waves Maxx audio), but since I installed Ubuntu 12.04 it sounded very cheap and as if I put my laptop in a tin can.
I've already tried installing alsa-hda-dkms from the alsa-daily ppa (http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-audio-dev/alsa-daily)

This is my audio controller:

laura@laura-XPS-L502X:~$ lspci -v | grep -A7 -i audio
    00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)
    Subsystem: Dell Device 04b6
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 51
    Memory at f1c00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
    Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

I hope you can help me, and you can always ask me for more information.

Result of aplay -l:

    **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
    card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC665 Analog [ALC665 Analog]
    Subdevices: 0/1
    Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
    card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: ALC665 Digital [ALC665 Digital]
    Subdevices: 1/1
    Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
    card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
    Subdevices: 1/1
    Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Result of aplay -L:

default
Playback/recording through the PulseAudio sound server
sysdefault:CARD=PCH
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog
Default Audio Device
front:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog
Front speakers
surround40:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog
4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog
4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog
5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog
5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog
7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital
IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
hdmi:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0
HDMI Audio Output
dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog
Direct sample mixing device
dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=1
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital
Direct sample mixing device
dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=3
HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0
Direct sample mixing device
dsnoop:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog
Direct sample snooping device
dsnoop:CARD=PCH,DEV=1
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital
Direct sample snooping device
dsnoop:CARD=PCH,DEV=3
HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0
Direct sample snooping device
hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog
Direct hardware device without any conversions
hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=1
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital
Direct hardware device without any conversions
hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=3
HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0
Direct hardware device without any conversions
plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog
Hardware device with all software conversions
plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=1
HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital
Hardware device with all software conversions
plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=3
HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0
Hardware device with all software conversions

Best Answer

I'm new to this, so you might have to bear with me. I want to try to help, though, as I am using the exact same computer (Dell XPS L502x) and installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS last week. I miss the Waves MaxxAudio program, but I don't feel like I'm experiencing loss in audio quality with Ubuntu.

lspci -v | grep -A7 -i audio gives me the same output as you, except Subsystem: Dell Device 050e. I'm assuming one of us just has a sound device with minor differences, and I don't think this is related to your problem.

Have you looked at the information found at this link, specifically question 5? Piping the find command to wc -l gives me 220 results, what does yours return? Since the device is detected with lspci I'm not sure if this is the issue, but worth a check.

Can you paste (paste.ubuntu.com) the output of aplay -l and aplay -L?

Also, in Synaptic Package Manager, make sure you have libportaudio2, libaudio, libasound2, and libsndfile1 installed. If it's a particular type of file that you're playing make sure the proper codecs are installed.

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