Q4OS Forum

intenciate

Member

Registered: 2026-08-21

Posts: 3

Chromebook Apollolake / Snappy - Audio not working

Hey there! First time Q4OS user here, I made the switch from Ubuntu as I just wasn't satisfied with that OS, and needed a lightweight alternative to suit the hardware. Only trouble is, I just can't get the audio to work at all! I've tried sof-firmware, PulseAudio, and this chromebook-linux-audio git (that's recommended on the mrchromebox guide), but none of these have worked for me so far, so was hoping I could get the eyes of someone who is a tad more experienced than I am! Any help is appreciated, so thanks in advance!

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 6,339

Website

Re: Chromebook Apollolake / Snappy - Audio not working

Welcome to the forum

What desktop environment are you using, Plasma, Trinity, other? You could follow https://www.q4os.org/dqa011.html#install.3 and post back

intenciate

Member

Registered: 2026-08-21

Posts: 3

Re: Chromebook Apollolake / Snappy - Audio not working

Thank you!

I'm using Trinity. I've installed the Pipewire sound server but hit a hurdle, when I right-click the mixer and go to Select Master Channel, there are no options in the dialogue box to change the Current Mixer. I've updated my packages and I attempted to use the artsplay command but it doesn't recognise it. Any guidance would be much appreciated!

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 6,339

Website

Re: Chromebook Apollolake / Snappy - Audio not working

The empty 'Current Mixer' list is
not a Trinity problem: kmix only offers mixers that ALSA really has, and on your
Chromebook no sound card is registered at all yet, so there is nothing to choose
from. The Apollolake DSP driver has to come up first, the 'PipeWire' entry then
appears by itself.

Apollolake Chromebooks (the 'reef' family, snappy included) are driven by the AVS
driver, the successor of the old Intel SST/Skylake driver. In Debian everything
needed for it is packaged from Debian 13 'trixie' on, which means:

- Q4OS 5 (Debian 12) and older: their kernels contain no machine driver for your
  DA7219 codec and the archive has no AVS firmware, so audio there needs a
  backported kernel plus firmware copied by hand - not worth the trouble.
- Q4OS 6 (Debian 13) and newer: all pieces are in the repositories.

So please make sure you run Q4OS 6 or newer, then do the following.

1) Install the pieces, some are probably present already:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install firmware-intel-sound alsa-ucm-conf alsa-utils git \
                 pipewire pipewire-audio pavucontrol-qt

'firmware-intel-sound' comes from the non-free-firmware component and carries
/lib/firmware/intel/avs/apl/dsp_basefw.bin, without it the DSP stays silent.
Please note 'pipewire-audio', it is the package that pulls in pipewire-alsa,
pipewire-pulse and wireplumber. Plain 'pipewire' alone installs none of them,
and pipewire-alsa is exactly what makes the 'PipeWire' entry show up in kmix.

2) Force the AVS driver:

sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/snd-avs.conf <<EOF
options snd-intel-dspcfg dsp_driver=4
options snd-soc-avs ignore_fw_version=1
options snd-soc-avs obsolete_card_names=1
EOF
sudo update-initramfs -u

3) Add the Chromebook mixer (UCM) profiles, the ones shipped by Debian do not
cover the reef boards:

git clone --depth 1 -b standalone https://github.com/WeirdTreeThing/alsa-ucm-conf-cros
sudo cp -a alsa-ucm-conf-cros/ucm2/* /usr/share/alsa/ucm2/
sudo cp -a alsa-ucm-conf-cros/overrides/* /usr/share/alsa/ucm2/conf.d/

This is precisely what the chromebook-linux-audio script does on a Debian 13
system, so running the script instead is fine too.

4) Reboot and check:

aplay -l

You should now get a card named 'avs_da7219', plus 'avs_dmic' and the HDMI/DP
card.

Please test with headphones plugged in. The internal speakers of the reef boards
hang on a MAX98357A amplifier and that path is not available today: Debian does
not build the AVS max98357a machine driver, and the chrultrabook project disables
that codec on purpose on every device that has it, because there is no volume
limiter yet and it can permanently damage the speakers. Headphones, HDMI, USB and
Bluetooth audio work normally.

5) Trinity side, once a card exists:

pkill kmix ; rm -f ~/.trinity/share/config/kmixrc ; kmix &

then right click the mixer icon -> 'Select Master Channel...' -> set 'Current
Mixer' to 'PipeWire' -> 'Ok', and set the levels in 'Volume Control'.

About artsplay: it is installed in /opt/trinity/bin, so it is only found inside a
Trinity session, use the full path or simply test with the alsa tools:

aplay /opt/trinity/share/sounds/KDE_Startup.wav
speaker-test -c2 -twav -l1

If /opt/trinity/bin/artsplay is really missing, 'sudo apt install arts-trinity'
brings it back.

Two leftovers from your earlier attempts worth cleaning up: the
chromebook-linux-audio script deletes /lib/firmware/intel/avs/max98357a-tplg.bin
('sudo apt install --reinstall firmware-intel-sound' restores it), and any
/etc/modprobe.d file still setting dsp_driver=3 (SOF) must go, it conflicts with
the setting above. Check with:

grep -r dsp_driver /etc/modprobe.d/

If it still stays silent after the reboot, post the output of these, we will
continue from there:

cat /etc/debian_version ; uname -r
cat /sys/class/dmi/id/sys_vendor /sys/class/dmi/id/product_name
aplay -l
dmesg | grep -iE 'avs|snd|sof|dsp' | tail -40

intenciate

Member

Registered: 2026-08-21

Posts: 3

Re: Chromebook Apollolake / Snappy - Audio not working

Hi again! Your above help succeeded, I can now get audio through headphones! Thank you so much for your assistance, I really appreciated the full explanations behind each step as well