[Responded] Headphone jack issues on Fedora

Framework Laptop 16 Linux
1

Fedora 41. When I plug in my headphones into the headphone jack adapter:

  1. Audio output does not automatically switch over to the headphone jack, I have to manually switch it in the audio mixer

  2. Volume is extremely low. All my volume controls are set to maximum.

I take the same headphones and plug it into an old Thinkpad that’s also running Fedora 41, and the headphones are loud and clear, and the audio switches automatically to the headphones when they get plugged in, and revert back to the speakers automatically, when I take them out.

But my biggest issue is the low volume from the audio adapter (the adapter is plugged into one of the lower bays, the ones closest to the front of the laptop). Setting the audio volume to 153%, the maximum setting, in audio mixer brings the volume to a quiet, but perceptible level; which I don’t need to do with the same headphones plugged into my old Thinkpad. And the volume drops back to low level if I pause and then resume playing audio, and I have to go back to the mixer and bring it up to 153% again. Annoying.

I doubt that much can be done about this, but I’ll take a chance at being surprised…

2

for number 1: do you set the audio expansion card as the default in pavucontrol? if you do, it should persist (it wont cause problems when no cable is plugged in as this causes the expansion card to disconnect itself until an audio cable is plugged back in, at which point pulseaudio should remember its the default and switch over)

for number 2: pulseaudio isnt limited to 153% - gui tools just impose that limit because the user generally doesnt want any higher (as going significantly higher than 100% distorts the audio a lot and is also really loud for properly-functioning hardware). you can use pactl to go higher. bear in mind that using this may not be great for your hardware and will likely destroy audio quality. i reckon that this is a case of the audio expansion card not being that powerful and your headphones needing a lot of power to drive - maybe an external amplifier (or even a different usb sound card with a better built-in amplifier) could be used?

3

Howdy @Sam_Varshavchik!

Sorry about the frustration with audio devices. I’ve been there many times. I have a couple ideas that might be able to help.

  1. You should be able to use pactl to enable a module that automatically to a new audio device whenever one is connected. The command to enable the module is pactl load-module module-switch-on-connect but your mileage may vary in practice. I’ve heard of automatic switching sometimes causing audio server crashes.
  2. I might be wrong, but this sounds like the system may be trying to use the pre-amp audio. Oftentimes Linux will see a soundcard as two devices, one “Digital” and one “Analog”. The device labeled as “Digital” is the audio before it is run through any sort of amplification and as a result is extremely quiet.

I hope this helps get your system in a more comfortable and usable place.

1 Like
4

Thanks, pactl did seem to make audio switching work better. I couldn’t find anything in pavucontrol that controlled the modules.

The audio volume issue looks to be a combination of both software and hardware factors. I’m not sure what I did but at some point, after random fiddling in the audio mixer I was able to get a somewhat quiet, but a reasonable volume at the 100% level.

But on my older Thinkpad increasing the volume level above 100% always resulted in noticeable distortion with properly mixed audio, on these headphones, and, here, going beyond 100% results in audio out increasing in volume but staying distortion free. It looks to me like the audio out volume through the headphone jack is still a bit low.