MSI GX660R - Audio comes only out of subwoofer

[sman789]

On an MSI GX660R laptop and on both Fedora 15 and Ubuntu (including 11.10 so far), the audio only comes out of the subwoofer - resulting in crackly sound at any sort of high pitch and a really quiet maximum volume. This is not due to any settings available in Sound Preferences.

The problem can actually be fixed, by adding

#Fix for Intel (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller with Realtek ALC1200 on MSI GT725
options snd-hda-intel model=targa-dig
# targa-dig	Targa/MSI
# targa-2ch-dig	Targa/MSI with 2-channel
# targa-8ch-dig Targa/MSI with 8-channel (MSI GX620)
# Headphones
options snd slots=snd-hda-intel
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel

to alsa-base.conf.

This fix, however, has two issues. The first is that headphones no longer work, nor any of the two other sound-output ports (except HDMI, but that's hardly the same). The second is that the fix actually breaks itself after one or two (varies) reboots, after which the sound stops working out of any speaker (including the subwoofer). The only way to fix this is to remove the fix, reboot, then add it again and reboot again.

As it says in the fix's comments, it is actually designed for the MSI GT725, on which those problems may not occur. But either way, if someone could offer some advice on how to make the fix permanent on my laptop and also allow me to use headphones, it would be much appreciated!

Thanks in advance

[dahrat]

gets tiring after a while great fix though i was glad to even use my speakers lol. thank you. i just switched over to fedora from ubuntu and was wondering if this could help out with a more permanent fix.

maybe someone could do something similar for this distro

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1702376

[oldcpu]

Instead of the option 'targa-dig' in the alsa-base.conf, did you try the option 'targa-8ch-dig' ?

Reference:
http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=144941.0

targa-dig and targa-8ch-dig are model options for the ALC882/883/885/888/889 (which is similar to an ALC1200) which come from the HD-Audio-Models.txt file in the alsa documentation. Here is a subset of the ALC882/883/885/888/889 section:

ALC882/883/885/888/889
======================
........
  targa-dig	Targa/MSI
  targa-2ch-dig	Targa/MSI with 2-channel
  targa-8ch-dig Targa/MSI with 8-channel (MSI GX620)
...

[sman789]

Originally Posted by oldcpu

Instead of the option 'targa-dig' in the alsa-base.conf, did you try the option 'targa-8ch-dig' ?
[/code]

It's weird because I could have sworn I'd already tried this... but apparently not because it works great! Thanks! I've rebooted it once and no sign of sudden self-destruction yet

One question though, if anyone knows the answer - how would I go about making the headphone sound come out of the audio out jack instead of the headphone one? My headphone jack is busted and on unmodified ALSA it outputs to audio out as well as headphone when set to "headphone" so it hasn't been a problem.

EDIT - nope, sorry - it killed itself again after the second reboot. My sound has stopped working altogether Also - Ubuntu freezes on the shutdown screen ever since I started messing with the Alsa-base.conf file

[sman789]

Turns out someone else found this:

Originally Posted by Falcao_sly on the MSI forums

i've spent 3 days but i solved it
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

and add two strings
options snd-hda-intel index=0
options snd-hda-intel model=acer-aspire-7730g

It's the best fix I've used so far and its survived three bootups without breaking. It still wont output headphones to the front audio-out though - but that's fine if you don't have a broken headphone socket.