I had no luck with pulseaudio. I was trying mostly pipewire. I have to go back to look for the steps. It was mostly google search and chatgpt info.
But you have a good point. The speakers may be busted. I already wiped out MacOS so I cannot think of a way to confirm that. I will try your steps tonight or this week. Thanks! -v On Tue, Jul 22, 2025 at 12:06 PM King Beowulf <[email protected]> wrote: > On 7/21/25 13:52, VY wrote: > > Hello all: > > > > I inherited an Intel based Macbook 12-inch from a friend who is retiring > it. > > > > The CPU is an Intel M3 chip. > > I installed Linux Mint and everything is working fine except audio. > > During audio playback, I can only hear sound on the 3.5 mm jack. > > The on-machine speaker is dead silent. The sound output on the 3.5mm > jack > > is working fine. > > I tried several tricks and none seem to be working. > > > > Asking if anyone has such experience? Any tip/pointer is much > appreciated. > > Thanks > > > > -Vincent > Vincent, > > What 'tricks' have you tried? It might be good to list those so we do > not duplicate efforts. > > Since you have audio from the jack, the sound chip driver module is > loaded and working. For ALSA and pulseaudio (or pipewire), check the > following: > > 1. alsamixer > PA is pretty stupid, so always check alsamixer (CLI utility) to > determine what is and what is not enabled. The speaker outputs might be > muted. No, the speaker output is not necessarily "master". It could > be 'PCM', 'front', etc. > > Check for to see if 'jack sensing' is on. This does not always work. > The names for this can vary a bit. On some audio drivers is can be > 'HP/Speaker'. Set it to mute. > > 2. pulseaudio/piperwire audo mixer applet > make sure you are selecting the correct device. The default profile > might be wring (Configuration). Do you see HDMI Audio or a USB web > cam? Disable these for now. > > For the sound device profile, if you are trying 'Analog Stereo Duplex' > try another such as 'Analog Surround 2.1 output [+ Analog Stereo Input] > > Under Output devices, depending on the profile and driver, check the > Port: list. Maybe you have the wrong one selected. > > 3. ALSA tools > > in CLI, run 'aplay -L' to list all the channel stuff ALSA sees reported > by the driver module. 'aplay -l' (lower case L) shows all the cards. Try > this: > > speaker-test -Dplug:pulse -c2 -twav > > With your headphones plugged in, can you here the 'front left, front > right'? This will keep repeating until CTRL-C. Now play with #1 and #2 > above until the sounds plays from the speakers. > > 4. Are you sure the speakers work? > > -Ed > > >
