Comment 14 for bug 728161

I just recently upgraded to Linux Mint 11 RC ("Katya"), which is based on Ubuntu 11.04. I can confirm Alek's solution in Reply#13 works for enabling the subwoofer. Audio from the laptop speakers now sounds great. There is a catch, however:

With snd-hda-intel set as "model=basic", the subwoofer works, but the front speakers no longer mute when headphones are plugged in.
With snd-hda-intel set as "model=auto", "model=laptop" (or laptop-amic), the speakers mute properly when headphones are plugged in, but the subwoofer stops working again. I will play around with some of the other snd-hda-intel options to see what they do.

One thing that's interesting to note: With "model=auto" set, the following options show up under Output:Connector within Sound Preferences: Analog Headphones, Analog Speakers, Analog Output. However, these settings are a bit goofy. Looking at ALSAMIXER while changing these settings, I can see that "Analog Speakers" has both Headphone and Speaker volumes set at 96 (default) - however, the speakers do mute when headphones are plugged in though ALSAMIXER does not reflect this. "Analog Headphones" properly mutes the speakers as shown in ALSAMIXER. Now, here's the weird part: "Analog Output" sets Speaker volume to 0 and leaves Headphone at 96. If I adjust the speaker volume, then change output mode to something else and back to "Analog Output", Speaker volume reverts to 0 again, even if "alsactl store 0" was issued before changing output modes. This leads me to believe the volume levels are hard-coded somewhere. Does anyone know where these are set? This might fix the speaker muting issue with "snd-hda-intel model=basic" option set.