So with the titled laptop model, I have tried installing multiple distros, but for the sake of this thread lets just say I'm going with Pop OS because it's easy (might want NixOS later). The laptop currently runs Windows 10, I will completely replace that with Linux.
When I boot up from a live CD, there is no audio from the laptop speakers or headphones. From lspci, I see that Pop OS DOES detect the sound cards. When I install and open Pavucontrol and play a youtube video, there does appear to be playback showing (the little volume bar goes up and down as something is playing). Furthermore, when I plug in a monitor via HDMI, the monitor DOES have sound.
I tried messing with all parts of alsamixer (moving the volume bars up and down), and that has not helped. Pop OS runs Pipewire, so I tried restarting and reinstalling that to no avail. Wiping the configs as well (basically what is described in this link:
https://support.system76.com/articles/audio/) so they reload with the service.
I tried flashing different USBs, fast startup has been turned off in windows and UEFI fast boot has been turned off in the BIOS. This laptop uses ALC294, and looking it up it seems like this chipset has posed problems for many people, and solutions are very inconsistent as to whether they will work for certain laptop models. I've tried many solutions which involve adding lines to alsa-base.conf, though I'm not sure how to replicate restarts from a live CD, I've been restarting alsa and pipewire instead.
If it helps, POP OS in VirtualBox does have audio, though not sure how relevant that info is.
Not quite sure what other options I can work with from here. Any links to potential solutions?
