Ubuntu-Certification

Feedback on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th Gen

Asked by aktiwers

In Ubuntu 18.04, 19.10 and 20.04 the Sound card is not recognized.

In 18.04 and 19.10 clean install the sound card works fine, but after upgrading to latest packages it is not detected anymore.

It shows as "Dummy output" - running alsamixer shows "no card detected".

I tried various fixes found around the web https://gist.github.com/hamidzr/dd81e429dc86f4327ded7a2030e7d7d9
I also tried this https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carbon_(Gen_7)#Audio

I also tried to disable dmci as suggested another place. But none seams to work.

From what I read it is a problem with sof-firmware or/and kernel 5.3+

Also the Microphone is not detected at all.

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Hui Wang (hui.wang) said : 		#1

Since this machine has a different deign on internal mic from other ordinary laptops, it is a little complicated to enable the audio on this machine.

If you don't want to enable the internal mic, you could add "options snd-hda-intel dmic_detect=0" in the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf, then you will get the speaker, headphone, headset-mic and hdmi audio to work. This applies to ubuntu 5.3, 5.4 and 5.0.0-oem-osp1 kernel.

If you want to enable the internal mic, you need to install the latest ubuntu 5.3, 5.4 and 5.0.0-oem-osp1 kernel:
For 18.04 and 19.10, you need to install latest 5.0.0-oem-osp1 kernel or 5.3.0-43-generic kernel, and install the latest linux-firmware and latest libasound2, part of ucm for LENOVO X1C7 is under SRU now, please refer to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-lib/+bug/1859754/comments/66

For 20.04, you need to install 5.4.0-18 or later kernel, and latest linux-firmware (the sof-firmware is not in the linux-firmware yet, maybe it will be in it next week), latest alsa-ucm-conf.

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aktiwers (aktiwers) said : 		#2

Thanks a lot for the info Hui Wang. I have spend the last two days and did not find any information about the osp1 kernel.

I just installed 5.0.0-oem-osp1 and libsound2 from your PPA. And I can see things a better detected!

I'm currently on 19.10 because I have been switching around between 18.04, 19.10 and 20.04 trying to get this to work.
I finally got everything except microphone to work on kernel 5.3.0-18,

After installing the osp1 kernel and libsound2 the microphone is working, but it is very low even though it is turned all the way up (also mic boost in alsamixer).

Another issue is that on osp1 kernel it only detects the 2 front speakers located below the screen, this laptop has 4 speakers that is working on 5.3.0-18.

Please view the two following screenshots, one for each kernel:
https://imgur.com/a/DVV4fgi

Another small thing is that I beleive the laptop has 4 built in microphones, only 3 seams to be detected with OSP1 kernel

Would it be better to upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 and install the 5.4 OSP1 kernel + libsound2 ?

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#3

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.