Guide to making sound work on 2017 MacBook Pro(14,1), No Touch Bar running Xubuntu/Ubuntu-based distros

Guide to making sound work on 2017 MacBook Pro(14,1), No Touch Bar running Xubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros.md

How to make sound work on 2017 MacBook Pro(14,1) No Touch Bar, running Xubuntu/Similiar distros

Before you start:

This is on Xubuntu 24.04 with Xfce desktop environment, it will likely work on Ubuntu and other similair distros as well, tough it has not been tested, you must be on PulseAudio, not PipeWire for this to work reliably.

This fix only fixes the speakers, not the microphone, I have not yet worked out how to fix the microphone, if you have a fix, please comment it below, beware that if you already have a fix for the mic, this will fix the speakers but may break your mic fix.

You may use this tutorial on PipeWire or another sound server at your own risk, it may work, it may not.

This has only been tested to work on a 2017 MacBook Pro(14,1), no touch bar, though it may well work with any Intel-based MBP with the Cirrus Logic CS8409 Codec

Now, open a terminal and run;

cat /proc/asound/card0/codec* | grep Codec

You should see: Codec: Cirrus Logic CS8409 or Codec: Cirrus Logic CS8409/CS42L83, you may also see another one under this, but as long as one of the above is present, proceed

So, let's get started:

Step 1: Install/Reinstall necessary packages:

Lets install the necessary packages, and, just to be sure we don't have any old configs, reinstall them if they are already present:

Paste this into a terminal and press enter:

Caution

Important: when prompted Y/n, do not press y/enter without hesitating, carefully review what is about to happen, for example it might say: "The following packages will be REMOVED: alsa-base* alsa-utils* pulseaudio* pulseaudio-module-bluetooth* wireplumber* xubuntu-desktop* xubuntu-desktop-minimal*,” you probably see the problem here, we don't want to remove Xubuntu desktop, no press n. The point is, you must know what you are doing, apt is powerful, and it might not end well if you always press y when prompted without second thought, this is important throughout the guide

rm -rf ~/.config/pulse
rm -rf ~/.config/alsa
sudo apt install pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pavucontrol alsa-base alsa-utils alsa-ucm-conf
sudo apt install --reinstall pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pavucontrol alsa-base alsa-utils alsa-ucm-conf

Then:

systemctl --user restart pulseaudio

Reboot

Here we are installing the necessary packages, in case some don't exist, then reinstalling them all, to delete and reinstall anything existing

Step 2: Install the kernel driver:

Run:

git clone https://github.com/egorenar/snd-hda-codec-cs8409.git
cd snd-hda-codec-cs8409
make
sudo make install

Now, let's load the driver:

sudo modprobe snd-hda-codec-cs8409

Step 3: Get the UCM profile:

Without changing directory, run:

git clone https://github.com/frogro/cs8409-alsa-install.git
cd cs8409-alsa-install

Run the installer script:

sudo ./cs8409-alsa-install.sh

Warning

You may get:

sudo: ./cs8409-alsa-install.sh: command not found  

In this case, run

chmod +x cs8409-alsa-install.sh  

Then retry

Step 4: Restart audio services:

Run:

systemctl --user restart pulseaudio

Step 5: Reboot:

GRUB was likely changed, so open a terminal and run:

sudo reboot now

Instead of using the logout menu

Warning

Upon boot, WiFi may or may not work, this is expected, simply use the logout menu to reboot again if this is the case

Step 6: Verify:

Open PulseAudio Volume Control from app menu, it might say, establishing connection to PulseAudio please wait, this may take some time, from 2-120 seconds, then, open the configuration tab, it should say Analog Stereo Duplex next to profile for Built-in Audio, see below screenshot:

If not, open the menu and select it.

Now click the padlock to ensure this stays working

Just to be completely sure, open https://www.onlinemictest.com/sound-test/ in a web browser and click to test both channels

Warning

Every time you boot and log in, PulseAudio will take some time to start, around 5-60 seconds,for this time, the speaker will appear as muted in the system tray, this is normal, you can check if it has started by hovering your mouse over the speaker icon inn system tray, if it's simply muted, it will say: Volume (percentage)% (muted) if it's not connected to PulseAudio it will say: Not connected to the PulseAudio server

If anyone has any suggestions or a fix for the microphone, please comment below