oh woe is me
in my previous post i talked about editing a couple of files and then everything thereafter being totally fine. but it was not to be. oh, some months ago now, i checked on my Manjaro installation and the sound fix was no longer working. Max volume only!
And I left it. I tried doing the same fix again and it didn't work and so I left it alone, resigned myself to controlling volume on a per-app basis.
Until! Like, a couple days ago? I thought, why not, I'll try messing around with these files a little and see if something can be done. I deleted alsa-base.conf. Restarted the computer. No sound at all. Put it back. Max volume sound. Put the fix back in analog-output.conf.common. Huzzah! Sound is working properly again!
Alas. When I restarted the computer this morning, whatever fragile thing that was making sound work broke again. It seems to fluctuate between no sound at all, which is how it is right this moment, and the max volume only setting I know and love.
🙁
I think I saw mentioned somewhere a custom Linux kernel made just for this brand of laptop. Maybe that's worth investigating.
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Well OK. I restarted my computer again. And I dragged the speaker's volume slider all the way to zero in pavucontrol, and when I dragged it back up it was working. I guess I'll have to keep that in mind for next time this happens. How peculiar. I'm glad it's working again 🙂