Dell XPS 13 Lunar Lake no speaker audio on guixOS

Guix
1

Hello all my ancestors and I apologize for this incoming long post:

I’m trying desperately to get the internal audio speaker working on Guix system. It’s only the internal speakers which don’t respond but I can run speaker-test and get loud, clear audio from both speakers (!?). Bluetooth audio and wire headphones also work. Again, it’s just the desktop audio (speakers) which doesn’t work; youtube and other desktop applications produce no sound through the internal speakers.

For context:

EXWM launched from GDM

Dell laptop

Intel Lunar Lake audio controller

sof-firmware installed

alsa-utils, alsa-lib, alsa-ucm-conf installed

pipewire and wireplumber installed

Initially, I thought the issue was that pipewire and wireplumber were not starting automatically. I was able to get pipewire to start on reboot by adding startup commands in my EXWM config but wireplumber still does not remain running. If I run it manually it immediately exits but stays running:

RTKit error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.PermissionStore was not provided
org.bluez.Error.NotPermitted

Relevant information:

$ guix describe

Generation 4 Jun 06 2026 16:43:43 (current)

nonguix 3ed7c20
guix 53fabf4

$ lspci -nnk | grep -A3 Audio

00:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: Intel Corporation Lunar Lake-M HD Audio Controller [8086:a828] (rev 10)
Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0cc9]
Kernel driver in use: sof-audio-pci-intel-lnl
Kernel modules: snd_sof_pci_intel_lnl, snd_hda_intel

$ aplay -l

card 0: sofsoundwire [sof-soundwire], device 2: Speaker
card 0: sofsoundwire [sof-soundwire], device 5: HDMI1
card 0: sofsoundwire [sof-soundwire], device 6: HDMI2
card 0: sofsoundwire [sof-soundwire], device 7: HDMI3

Alsa sees the speaker device but it still doesn’t work (!?)

pactl list cards returns no output. pactl list short sinks returns:

0 auto_null module-null-sink.c s16le 2ch 44100Hz SUSPENDED

In alsamixer I can select the sof-soundwire card and it shows the speaker is NOT muted. Pavucontrol shows ‘No cards available for configuration’ in the config tab.

I do not understand how 1. ALSA sees the speaker, 2. speaker-test outputs audio from speakers, 3. the speakers are not muted in alsamixer, 4. pipewire can run, 5. wireplumber can run YET pactl list cards shows nothing and the only sink is ‘auto_null’ (???)

Any one have any suggestions? Please guix gods, I beg of thee, I am but a humble normie. I just want to watch my soaps™ without headphones, man. I’m not saying I’ll name my first-born child after you if you help me solve this but I WILL take it into SERIOUS consideration. Please help.

2
  1. Can you put your code in code blocks by using three tildes before the code ```like this and then select the shell as the syntax highlight for all of your blocks?
  2. I’m still a relative newbie to guix, so I’ll just say, post screenshots of your pavucontrol,qpwgraph and outputs of herd status and wpctl status.
3

Just in case, do you have the following in your user-account?

(supplementary-groups '(“wheel” “netdev” “audio” “video”))
4

OK thanks for responding.

Here’r the commands you requested plus some more:

herd status gives:

herd: error: /run/user/1000/shepherd/socket: No such file or directory

relevant bit from output of wpctl status:

Audio
 ├─ Devices:
 │      42. sof-soundwire [alsa]
 │
 ├─ Sinks:
 │
 ├─ Sources:
 │

also did wpctl inspect 42, relevant bit:

api.alsa.use-ucm = "true"
api.acp.auto-port = "false"
api.acp.auto-profile = "false"
device.description = "sof-soundwire"
device.name = "alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1f.3-platform-sof_sdw"

Not sure what to make of this information.
Could it be a /UCM/ACP issue rather than a driver issue?

Also for some reason I can’t edit my original post so here’s the code from it hopefully properly formatted now:

WirePlumber warnings:

RTKit error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.PermissionStore was not provided
org.bluez.Error.NotPermitted

System information:

$ guix describe

Generation 4  Jun 06 2026 16:43:43 (current)

nonguix 3ed7c20
  repository URL: https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix
  branch: master
  commit: 3ed7c207c59dde11a97db483cad4c96eae1a10c4

guix 53fabf4
  repository URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git
  branch: master
  commit: 53fabf4eb1f91e670f391d579c31b88ff83a207c

Audio controller:

$ lspci -nnk | grep -A3 Audio

00:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: Intel Corporation Lunar Lake-M HD Audio Controller [8086:a828] (rev 10)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0cc9]
        Kernel driver in use: sof-audio-pci-intel-lnl
        Kernel modules: snd_sof_pci_intel_lnl, snd_hda_intel

ALSA devices:

$ aplay -l

card 0: sofsoundwire [sof-soundwire], device 2: Speaker
card 0: sofsoundwire [sof-soundwire], device 5: HDMI1
card 0: sofsoundwire [sof-soundwire], device 6: HDMI2
card 0: sofsoundwire [sof-soundwire], device 7: HDMI3

ALSA clearly sees the speaker device, and speaker-test is able to produce audio through the internal speakers.

However:

$ pactl list cards

returns no output, and:

$ pactl list short sinks

0       auto_null       module-null-sink.c      s16le 2ch 44100Hz       SUSPENDED

I can only insert one screenshot at a time here so I’m opting for qpwgraph. pavucontrol Configuration tab simply says:

No cards available for configuration

qwdgraph:

qpwgraph
qpwgraph1920×1200 142 KB

5

Yes, this is how the ‘user’ block in /etc/config.scm looks after install, I haven’t touched it since:

(users (cons* (user-account
(name “user”)
(comment “User”)
(group “users”)
(home-directory “/home/user”)
(supplementary-groups '(“wheel” “netdev” “audio” “video”)))
%base-user-accounts))