No sound and no bluetooth on freshly installed sparkylinux 8.0

[iwan0000iwanov]

Greetings!

Just installed fresh Sparkylinux 8.0 on my 12 inch early 2016 Macbook. It was the first distro out of 4 of 5 I tried which worked. But! There is no sound.

I ran inxi -F in the Terminal.

The output:

Device-1: Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
Device-2: Broadcom 720p FaceTime HD Camera driver: N/A
API: ALSA v: k6.12.48+deb13-amd64 status: kernel-api
Server-1: PulseAudio v: 17.0 status: active

I also ran lspci -v.

The output:

00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio (rev 21)
Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 7270
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 40, IOMMU group 10
Memory at 92820000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Memory at 90000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel, snd_soc_avs, snd_sof_pci_intel_skl

I would appreciate if there are some tips on how to solve the problem.

And there is no bluetooth - at all. No devices are list. I guess the adapt is not recognized.

I also installed the firmware-sof-signed package. Still no sound.

Pulseaudio is in place and shows as Output Built-in Audio Analog Stereo.

 

[osprey]

Greetings!

Just installed fresh Sparkylinux 8.0 on my 12 inch early 2016 Macbook. It was the first distro out of 4 of 5 I tried which worked. But! There is no sound.
....
I would appreciate if there are some tips on how to solve the problem.
....
Pulseaudio is in place and shows as Output Built-in Audio Analog Stereo.

Welcome!

Some basic checks that can be run in a terminal:

Check the status of audio: systemctl --user status pulseaudio.service
If it's not running, start it with: systemctl --user start pulseaudio.service

One can check whether the sound system is muted with: pavucontrol, and uncheck any mute icons.

One can run: alsamixer, and uncheck any outputs that are muted by changing MM to 00 with the m command. Whilst in alsamixer, one can raise the levels of volume to the maximum to ensure volume is set,

One can run: speaker-test in a terminal to see if sound exists. It makes white noise that can be stopped with the keypress ctrl+c. If heard, sound is working, if not then not.

If none of that works, then there are other things to look at.

 

[iwan0000iwanov]

Welcome!

Some basic checks that can be run in a terminal:

Check the status of audio: systemctl --user status pulseaudio.service
If it's not running, start it with: systemctl --user start pulseaudio.service

One can check whether the sound system is muted with: pavucontrol, and uncheck any mute icons.

One can run: alsamixer, and uncheck any outputs that are muted by changing MM to 00 with the m command. Whilst in alsamixer, one can raise the levels of volume to the maximum to ensure volume is set,

One can run: speaker-test in a terminal to see if sound exists. It makes white noise that can be stopped with the keypress ctrl+c. If heard, sound is working, if not then not.

If none of that works, then there are other things to look at.

Thanks for the reply!

The outputs (following the command above):

1)~$ systemctl --user status pulseaudio.service
● pulseaudio.service - Sound Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service; enabled; preset:>
Active: active (running) since Tue 2025-09-23 08:25:55 CEST; 13min ago
Invocation: c392ce14022348f48c1c4b1b539aea40
TriggeredBy: ● pulseaudio.socket
Main PID: 1455 (pulseaudio)
Tasks: 3 (limit: 9148)
Memory: 45.7M (peak: 47M)
CPU: 31.806s
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/[email protected]/session.slice/pulsea>
└─1455 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no --log-target=journal

sep 23 08:25:55 derp-x8664 systemd[1432]: Starting pulseaudio.service - Sound S>
sep 23 08:25:55 derp-x8664 systemd[1432]: Started pulseaudio.service - Sound Se>
lines 1-14/14 (END)

2) ~$ systemctl --user start pulseaudio.service
~$

3) In pavucontrol everything is fine. I play a video and even see how the slider is moving while somebody is speaking. But there is simply no speakers' sound.

4) In alsamixer I fixed everything as it should be. Still not sound.

5) ~$ speaker-test

speaker-test 1.2.14

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 1 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 192 to 2097152
Period size range from 64 to 699051
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 12000
was set buffer_size = 48000
0 - Front Left
Time per period = 1,979192
0 - Front Left
Time per period = 2,985006
0 - Front Left
Time per period = 3,003040
0 - Front Left
Time per period = 3,000418
0 - Front Left
Time per period = 3,003123
0 - Front Left
Time per period = 3,009923
0 - Front Left
Time per period = 2,947642
0 - Front Left
Time per period = 3,005683
0 - Front Left
Time per period = 3,003341
0 - Front Left
Time per period = 3,003019
0 - Front Left
Time per period = 3,004579
0 - Front Left
Time per period = 3,005712
0 - Front Left

P.S. I also did what was written here https://github.com/leifliddy/macbook12-audio-driver. Still no sound.

P.P.S. Btw, I managed to resolve the Bluetooth problem. Connected a bluetooth headset and everything worked. There is also sound through a wired headset (3,5 mm jack). Just no speakers' sound - no matter what I do.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

some tips on how to solve the problem.

Welcome to the forums!

To see if problem is what I suspect it is then please provide output of the following command:

sudo fuser -av /dev/snd/*

This will let us know if there is any other audio service or program that may interfere with sound devices.
Normally only one on of them is allowed to use a device.

Depending on output I'll let you know how to continue.

 

[osprey]

P.S. I also did what was written here https://github.com/leifliddy/macbook12-audio-driver. Still no sound.

P.P.S. Btw, I managed to resolve the Bluetooth problem. Connected a bluetooth headset and everything worked. There is also sound through a wired headset (3,5 mm jack). Just no speakers' sound - no matter what I do.

That driver at github is not for an intel codec, so wasn't going to work.

It may be possible to add an option to the driver to induce it to use the speakers.

The snd_hda_intel Linux driver's main option is: model, which specifies your sound card's model for proper configuration, especially for specific hardware like macbooks.

There are a couple of approaches, the first idea is to find the correct model name and add the option in a file you create in the /etc/modprobe.d/ directory so that the system uses it.

One creates a file in the /etc/modprobe.d/ directory with a name, for example, like: audio-opt.conf, and adds the line: options snd_hda_intel model=SOUNDCARD, where SOUNDCARD is the model number of the sound card on the machine. One needs to identify the model number of the sound card which may be possible by accessing the apple technical specifications for that machine, if there's no other way.

Alternatively, according to the following quote from the kernel docs, one can use the vendor:product codes with the model option:

A new style for the model option that was introduced since 5.15 kernel
is to pass the PCI or codec SSID in the form of model=XXXX:YYYY
where XXXX and YYYY are the sub-vendor and sub-device IDs in hex
numbers, respectively.
<snip>
For example, passing model=103c:8862 will apply the quirk for HP ProBook 445 G8 (which
isn't found in the model table as of writing) as long as the device is
handled equivalently by the same driver.

The outputs in posts so far do not appear to have shown a vendor:product code. On a machine here, which is not a macbook, they can be obtained with a command such as the following:

[~]$ lspci -nnk | grep -i aud -A3
00:1f.3 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Raptor Lake High Definition Audio Controller [8086:7a50] (rev 11)
        Subsystem: ASRock Incorporation Device [1849:1897]
        Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
        Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel, snd_soc_avs, snd_sof_pci_intel_tgl
--
01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: NVIDIA Corporation GK208 HDMI/DP Audio Controller [10de:0e0f] (rev a1)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device [1462:8c93]
        Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
        Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel

Since the intel card is the default, the entry in the /etc/modprobe.d/audio-opt.conf file would be:

options snd_hda_intel model=8086:7a50

If these hex numbers aren't available on your machine, they may be available elsewhere to identify the sound card, but I can't say where since my macbook days ended about 5 years ago. There are no guarantees with these approaches. Manufacturers can change chips without changing model numbers and drivers have to catch up.

 

[iwan0000iwanov]

Thanks a lot to everyone who responded. Unfortunately, I could not waste any more time on figuring out how to fix the problem. I read on lots of other forums that people who tried to install any Linux distro on this machine, all encounted the same problem - no sound. And apparently there is still no solution.
I am using Linux for around 20 years already and should admit that most of the times no distro works out of the box. Unless one uses a modern, high end, good specs and known brand hardware. Older hardware is prone to lots of problems and requires a lot of time to tweak the machine.
So, I just had a clean install of Mac OS Monterrey (the last one which is supported by this Macbook) and am settled for the time being.
By the time the OS stops running (if the hardware is still alive) I might consider installing some light Linux distro with limited functionality (unless someone comes up with working sound drivers). Which I doubt...

Again, thanks a lot for help. Much appreciated.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

And apparently there is still no solution.

You give up so easily, didn't even provide output I requested to give it a try.

I am using Linux for around 20 years already and should admit that most of the times no distro works out of the box.

I'm using Linux (Debian) for 2 years and it works perfectly.
Few issues I had was able to solve.