New Mini PC-No Sound/Audio Linux Mint 21.3 & 22

Linux Support
1

Good day to you all and thank you for reading!

I have recently bought a new mini pc. It is by a company call NiPoGi…if anyone’s ever heard of that…?!
It came with Windows preinstalled and I hastily replaced that with Linux Mint 22.
All seemed to go just fine until I realised I have no audio through the HDMI or the 3.5mm headphone socket.

After reading online it seemed most people were more keen to use Linux Mint 21.3 so I now have that installed alongside version 22.
Both boot up nice and quick, I have wifi, keyboard mouse, picture via HDMI but no sound at all on both operating systems.
I managed to find the audio mixer in the command prompt, it shows audio is playing from youtube or whatever, but no sound anywhere!

In the general settings menu, I have the options for Analogue audio or Digital/USB/HID neither make a difference and both fail on the speaker test also.

Im certainly not smart enough to fix this by myself, so any help is very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance, here is my system info…

System:
  Kernel: 6.8.0-60-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: N/A Desktop: Cinnamon 6.0.4 tk: GTK 3.24.33
    wm: muffin vt: 7 dm: LightDM 1.30.0 Distro: Linux Mint 21.3 Virginia base: Ubuntu 22.04 jammy
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: N/A model: N/A serial: <superuser required> UEFI: American Megatrends LLC.
    v: TWL_P0_AK_10_0108_AMI.15W date: 01/17/2025
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: Intel N150 bits: 64 type: MCP smt: <unsupported> arch: N/A rev: 0 cache:
    L1: 384 KiB L2: 2 MiB L3: 6 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 3446 high: 3600 min/max: 700/3600 cores: 1: 3600 2: 3417 3: 3401 4: 3369
    bogomips: 6451
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel driver: N/A bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:46d4 class-ID: 0300
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.4 driver: X: loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa
    gpu: N/A display-ID: :0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x285mm (20.0x11.2") s-diag: 582mm (22.9")
  Monitor-1: None-1 res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 size: N/A
  OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 15.0.7 256 bits) v: 4.5 Mesa 23.2.1-1ubuntu3.1~22.04.3
    direct render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel driver: N/A bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:54c8 class-ID: 0403
  Device-2: Zoran Personal Media Division (Nogatech) USB Audio and HID type: USB
    driver: snd-usb-audio bus-ID: 1-6:5 chip-ID: 0573:1573 class-ID: 0300 serial: <filter>
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k6.8.0-60-generic running: yes
  Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.99.1 running: yes
  Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.48 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet driver: r8169 v: kernel pcie:
    speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 port: 4000 bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8168 class-ID: 0200
  IF: enp1s0 state: down mac: <filter>
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8821CE 802.11ac PCIe Wireless Network Adapter driver: rtw_8821ce v: N/A
    pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 port: 3000 bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:c821 class-ID: 0280
  IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Realtek Bluetooth Radio type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 1-5:4
    chip-ID: 0bda:c821 class-ID: e001 serial: <filter>
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 2.1 lmp-v: 4.2
    sub-v: f098 hci-v: 4.2 rev: 75b8
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 953.87 GiB used: 13.94 GiB (1.5%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda model: G537NQ 1T size: 953.87 GiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter>
    rev: 127 scheme: GPT
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 449.26 GiB used: 13.93 GiB (3.1%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda3
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 511 MiB used: 6.1 MiB (1.2%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 2 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 file: /swapfile
USB:
  Hub-1: 1-0:1 info: Hi-speed hub with single TT ports: 12 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s
    chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900
  Device-1: 1-1:2 info: SHARKOON GmbH type: Keyboard,Mouse driver: hid-generic,usbhid
    interfaces: 2 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s power: 100mA chip-ID: 1ea7:0002 class-ID: 0301
  Device-2: 1-2:3 info: YICHIP 2.4G Receiver type: Keyboard,Mouse driver: hid-generic,usbhid
    interfaces: 2 rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s power: 100mA chip-ID: 3151:3020 class-ID: 0301
  Device-3: 1-5:4 info: Realtek Bluetooth Radio type: Bluetooth driver: btusb interfaces: 2
    rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s power: 500mA chip-ID: 0bda:c821 class-ID: e001 serial: <filter>
  Device-4: 1-6:5 info: Zoran Personal Media Division (Nogatech) USB Audio and HID
    type: Audio,HID driver: snd-usb-audio interfaces: 4 rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s power: 100mA
    chip-ID: 0573:1573 class-ID: 0300 serial: <filter>
  Hub-2: 2-0:1 info: Super-speed hub ports: 4 rev: 3.1 speed: 10 Gb/s chip-ID: 1d6b:0003
    class-ID: 0900
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 56.0 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Repos:
  Packages: apt: 2182
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list
    1: deb http: //packages.linuxmint.com virginia main upstream import backport
    2: deb http: //archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy main restricted universe multiverse
    3: deb http: //archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
    4: deb http: //archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
    5: deb http: //security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-security main restricted universe multiverse
Info:
  Processes: 227 Uptime: 11m wakeups: 0 Memory: 15.4 GiB used: 2.54 GiB (16.5%) Init: systemd
  v: 249 runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 11.4.0 alt: 11/12 Client: Unknown python3.10 client
  inxi: 3.3.13
2

Hi Nino. It would appear you have two problem, or no problems .. the latter sounds more likely. Take a look in the GUI sound settings and make sure you’re selecting the right interfaces for sound output. Audio-out will be likely be using the Zoran chip, whereas HDMI sound should be going via a different path.

You might want to take Ubuntu as a starting point as it’s likely got the most polished sound support, then many switch to Mint once you know it works. You can try it on a live USB key without necessarily installing.

3

I often find that installing pulseaudio is helpful in finding where audio problems lie. It will be available in the Software Centre.

4

Hi madpenguin,

Funnily enough I took it upon myself to install Ubuntu last night and then I saw your recommendation!
Im using Ubuntu 20.04 and I’ve had no issues at all. Initially there was no audio but in the general settings menu HDMI was listed as an option, whereas it wasn’t with Mint 21.3 or 22

So i’m quite happy my computer is working again. If I can be bothered I might continue trying to fix Mint but right now I have all the software I need installed and I like the feel of Ubuntu too.

Many thanks for your input!

5

:slight_smile:

Sound is always a funny one .. HDMI in particular is one of those things where traditionally people just didn’t use it (because speakers on monitors are generally pretty .. well .. “cheap”) so I’m not sure the up-take (hence GUI support, fault feedback etc) was that great.

These days with hardware being a little different, maybe speakers in monitors a little better, more people seem to be using HDMI (I am for example) and hence I think there’s more focus on getting it to work properly and have it properly supported in GUI’s. (which is maybe why you see it in more recent distro’s but not in older ones).

In my case, Raspberry Pi 5’s don’t have an audio socket :slight_smile: so the choices are HDMI or Bluetooth. Both work well for me, but HDMI is just easy for random sound support. I might plug in a blue-tooth headset for music or video.

There is to the old addage “there’s strength in numbers” :slight_smile: .. these days I often aim at hardware (and software) where the usage numbers are high, generally speaking it tends to imply fewer problems because there’s more chance someone else already shouted.