There are some sites that tell how to fix realtek settings.

Gotcha. It's hard for people to 'come in in the middle' if you get my meaning, which is why I replied the way I did. This reply adds some, so maybe my response will help, maybe not.


This is useful to know - so things are working in Windows with the Realtek but not with your current Debian install. I haven't played with 'straight' Debian in a while, but my suspicion is you may be using an older kernel/older modules (or there's something not entirely right about how your motherboard vendor setup that Realtek chip on your specific board) - have you tried the live boot suggestion with an up-to-date and well-documented desktop distro like Ubuntu?

I wasn't referencing the Realtek card with that statement, but this is also useful information. I was thinking about the Asus card with various 'settings' or 'features' - the C-Media chipsets don't actually do much in terms of hardware, but soundcards sold with them usually advertise a huge list of features that exist purely in the Windows software.


I haven't played around with jack extensively, but I don't believe it should be required for basic audio output. I would try live booting something very current and seeing what works and what doesn't. If we know more about the specs of the computer involved and your output requirements it may also be easier/faster to just get a single working soundcard and call it a day.

No I wouldn't abandon the 'linux ship' - the worst case scenario here is just abandon the onboard audio (and I can't imagine anything of significant value to be lost in doing so).

Well and here we going to disagree. If I abandon the onboard card I'm loosing my only 5.1 device. And even if I wanted to get another one (which I don't since the 898 is a very respectful chip-set) I have no more room for internal devices so I will have to dish out for a decent USB surround card, which I'm not willing to do, especially since the card is working just fine with other OS.

I will try Fedora live-img, in a meanwhile, is there an easy way to revert the Debian drivers back? they seemed to be wiped/disabled by the Realtek package.

I'd be cautious with USB and surround sound - that generally relies on proprietary drivers as opposed to class-compliant audio.

Forgive the question but I'm also not entirely clear on this machine's configuration:
- It has the Realtek onboard which you're using to provide 5.1 analog outputs.
- It also has an Asus card (?) which you're using to connect (?) something else (?)
- The nVidia card can provide HDMI output with audio, but you aren't currently connected to this.

My inclination would be to query if the Asus card can 'do it all' and if not, why not, and possibly replace/upgrade that to something that properly handles everything on one device. Short of that, the nVidia card's multi-channel output may be useful - if the issue is just one of connectivity, an audio extractor isn't terribly expensive either.

I have no idea what you did or didn't do specifically (and it sounds like you've tried a lot of things in troubleshooting this). This guide may or may not be helpful to using dpkg and apt to remove/repair packages: https://linuxhint.com/uninstall-debian-packages/

But honestly I'd be more interested in trying with a live image (and I'm not sure what the issue is with Ubuntu, but it tends to have excellent hardware support - wouldn't hurt to try it just as a live image, right?) with everything fresh, and none of the troubleshooting/configuration getting in the way, and see what does and doesn't work.

Also, and just to perhaps explain myself a bit more here: you are reading me right if you're thinking 'he's just saying to replace hardware and disable the one that we can't troubleshoot to resolution' - what is more important here? Working sound output, or specifically sorting out whatever is going on with this exact OS/driver/hardware combination?

Don't worry, I don't even consider this an option.

The onbard 898 is to drive my surround, the PCI card is a card with an isolated amplifier that drives my 80ohm headphones (it has only one channel out, and one channel in, and the HDMI is there to run my big plasma TV with terrible build in speakers- which I'm also hesitant to upgraded for yet another number of reasons.

I will first look into that guide, then I will try Fedora live img as I think it will be just a waste of time to try ubuntu even if it works as I will refuse to use it.

I totally get your logic, its juts not how I do things. As you prob figured by now I'm a bit weird on how I conduct myself, but its just how I do things. I have a plan- fix the pkg on debian if fails I will try fedora, if none of this works I will go back to WIn7/ssd or Win10/hdd with yet another win partition for gaming that's offline. Sounds absolutely terrible but hey...

Thanks again for all your time and everyone else that contributed to this thread.

Honestly USB for 'surround sound' is not a great option regardless (because even the Windows-side with proprietary drivers usually comes with various limits) - for stereo audio, with class-compliant devices, it works great though.

Alright this helps me better understand what's going on. My suggestions (barring getting the 898 to work) would be, in no particular order (and with minimal consideration of cost sanity):

- Get an audio extractor that sits between the HDMI output and the TV, and spits out 5.1 (or 7.1) to whatever surround sound via analog.
- Replace the 898 and the Asus card with a single soundcard that can handle both/all outputs - a random example would be a Creative ZxR
- Replace the 989 and the Asus card with a single soundcard that can handle multi-channel audio, plus a dedicated headphone amplifier (and split the front L/R output) - a random example would be a Razer AC-1 plus a Fiio E9
- Replace the 989 and Asus card with a single soundcard that can handle multi-channel audio, plus a USB-input capable dedicated headphone amplifier - a random example would be a Razer AC-1 plus a TEAC UD-503
- Dump all of the 'soundcards' in this mix and get an AV receiver that can handle HDMI audio, and hook the nVidia HDMI into that, and use the AV receiver for both speaker and headphone outputs

Most of these suggestions can become runaway trains in terms of price, they're offered mostly to give you more ideas about how to tackle this problem. Audio on computers (regardless of OS) is always kind of a touchy thing to get working, and after a point my patience for drivers and tweaking is spent so I will fall back to hardware solutions that will work as intended.

No interest in a holy war, but my reasoning with Ubuntu (apart from familiarity with it) is that it's more similar to Debian, and tends to have good documentation and sane defaults. So if it works there, it means it *can* work.

'absolutely terrible' is about right - I'm not sure I'd suffer through Windows 10 for the sake of a Realtek codec...

I'm not up to date on these but few years ago the state of USB surround was borderline scam. But you are right there are some nice single output DACs, although they come at a price.

Its not that simple IMO. The headphones pick up the voltage ripples which are too annoying to me to bare with. I'm not sure about the cards you mentioned but thats why I chose the Xonar- it has an true isolated amp. that means it minimises the voltage ripples, and there is none of that annoying buzz when the power hungry hardware is being used in the PC. Same for my surround, its high gain, the ALC is a very nice chip with very good S/N ratio. That reminds me of another issue with Debian. There was this popping and crackling every time the sound was about to play. Like the device was enabling right before the sound was played. I was also trying to deal with that with no success.


Everything seems to come at a price. I just wish I would set up this audio to work flawlessly on linux because after that I will never have to touch anything here. Win10 as bad as it is, it seems very convenient compared to linux where one has to do a lot of legwork for, well most things it seems. I just wished Win10 wouldn't delete my files and re-enable its intrusive features on every forced update.... hence the idea of crippling it and leaving it offline on that partition, or just going back to 7 since I wont have to worry about security breaches. But if I give it some crappy spare ssd to eat at and don't give it access to other drives it might do just fine. After all I just need an OS to access internet, watch media and fetch some files.

The problem, as I always understood it, is that 'USB Audio' (the actual spec) is pretty basic in terms of bandwidth, so to do surround sound requires essentially creating your own device - Creative did this going back to the early 2000s, some even had DSP accelerators (just like their PCI cards), but the drivers are (afaik) Windows-only. For stereo audio this is a non-issue because USB Audio handles that just fine, especially with Class 2, which linux supports natively.

This is a pretty typical problem with onboard audio/integrated audio - bad grounding is almost always the cause (it's nothing you can probably fix - it's on the PCB itself). Dedicated soundcards usually get past it; external solutions almost always get past it. It has nothing to do with headphones vs speakers though (nor with having a 'special amplifier') - the noise is there no matter what, you probably just notice it more readily on headphones. No magic is needed to get around it though. The 'true amp' on that Asus card is actually a TI IC, which has been used in some dedicated headphone amplifiers as well (but they generally get a lot more power output from it, because they can run on higher supply voltage (if I remember right for 'full output' it needs something like 14V)), it's not a bad solution, but it isn't novel either. The ZxR uses the same chip, for example. Why Asus decided to nerf the card for anything but stereo output is beyond me, but 10 years ago was a wild time for 'personal audio'

Since you don't need 5.1 or 7.1 for headphones, you can run a USB solution straight out, and there's a plethora of options that include all manner of headphone amplifiers to boot. The other option is to 'break the chain' and run optical from the system -> external D/A converter -> amplification, which shouldn't have any noise present (its electronically impossible for any ground loops or similar to exist between the PC and the D/A in this scenario), unless you're also using line inputs on the PC which may have noise and once it's in the signal, it's there. I've never encountered an HDMI solution that spits out noise from the source - that's a pretty tightly controlled spec that works very well. The extractor box may or may not be 'great' depending on what you select for that role. The AV receiver route would, by far, be the easiest solution here - just take 5.1 or 7.1 PCM from the nVidia and let the AVR work it out for headphones/speakers/whatever (in other words, use the right tool for the job).

Most Realtek codec solutions will measure, real-world, in the mid to low 90s - not the best, but a far cry from the junk that was being shipped 15 years ago (and I point this out not to 'dump on' anything, but to say that there's nothing 'magic' about the Realtek codec and that its quality is not impossible to replicate or exceed). The gotcha is that on a seemingly board-by-board basis you can have grounding issues or noise ingress, which basically negates any 'good quality' for that solution. External converters will generally beat that (but the bigger question is 'will you be able to notice it audibly' and the answer is 'probably not') - again the AVR solution is probably the most self-contained and cleanest. But going to a single soundcard that can provide both 5.1 + headphones, either as a line source with a Y splitter, or as a line source + separate headphone output would also be an improvement. I know the ZxR to work well in linux, and it provides the same TI headphone amplifier as the Asus, as well as 5.1 outputs (and the linux driver implements most of its featureset too).


Honestly not sure on that, but (and I know you've said this works on Windows) this sounds more and more like a hardware issue than not, based on descriptors like this.


And my reasoning is that your goal is 'working sound output' not a specific implementation, so why not just have your cake and eat it too?

Try the live image with a newer distro with a newer kernel (Fedora 34 should do it) and see how it works - if the Realtek solution is just nerfed, why make yourself crazy with it, grab a working soundcard (or external box) and be happy.

I'm kinda getting fed up with this narrative. Other users reported this bug:
If I would spend money on hardware it would be cheaper and far easier for me to get few cheap SSD's to run a back up drive and keep one to swap when the original fails due to win write abuse. Looks like its the most logical option at this point since I just installed a new network card and Win10 connected to it on boot, where debian need drivers once more(didn't need drivers for 3 previous cards, so i can anticipate similar legwork for that as well).

Bonus content:
After I let the linux upgrade some packages it refuses to shutdown.

Last update- Everything works fine in Fedora! Sound is clear and no popping/crackling before media starts playing. Also the new network card was immediately recognised and functions properly. Thank you all for help!

Glad to hear it. My suspicion is the issue was the older kernel in the version of Debian you were running.