Dell XPS 13 Plus 9320 (SKU 0AF3): no speaker tuning ships — internal speakers sound thin and mid-forward

[nazariitaran]

Summary. Omarchy ships no speaker tuning that matches the Dell XPS 13 Plus 9320
(SKU 0AF3), so the internal speakers play the raw Linux path, which on this unit is
strongly mid-forward and sounds clearly worse than the same machine's Windows
install. omarchy audio tuning status reports Matches: nothing ships for this laptop. The only shipped tunings are dell-xps-2026 (XPS 14/16, SKUs 0DB9/0DBA)
and asus-proart-p14-n1x.

Hardware.

• Model: Dell XPS 9320 (XPS 13 Plus 9320), board 0CW9KM, SKU 0AF3
• Omarchy 4.0.4-1
• Card: sofsoundwire (Intel Alder Lake-P SOF SoundWire), topology sof-adl-rt1316-l12-rt714-l0.tplg
• Speaker amps: 2 × rt1316 (2 channels each); mic rt715-sdca

What it sounds like. Thin, quiet and heavily mid-focused — the usual description
is "telephone". This is a voicing gap, not the silent-sidecar-amp class of bug:
every amp/DAC/mixer switch is on and the HiFi profile is active, so audio does flow.
Linux simply applies none of the vendor voicing Windows gets.

Measurements (built-in mic, relative, not calibrated). Flat multitone through
the raw physical speaker sink, recorded with the built-in mic, each band normalised
to 700 Hz:

Hz	raw level rel. 700 Hz
100	−40.7 dB
150	−30.2 dB
300	−25.1 dB
700	0 dB
1500	−4.4 dB
3000	−17.6 dB
6000	−22.5 dB
10000	−17.9 dB

The response peaks around 700 Hz–1.5 kHz and collapses either side — a telephone
band. The built-in mic has its own rolloff, so treat this as shape, not absolute
level.

Local workaround (works, but tuned by ear). A filter-chain dropped into
~/.config/pipewire/omarchy-speaker-tuning.conf.d/90-tuning.conf, using Omarchy's
own paths and names (omarchy_speaker_tuning sink, omarchy-speaker-tuning.service),
so omarchy audio tuning status recognises it. Chain:

• high-pass 50 Hz; +8 dB lowshelf @180 Hz; −3.5 dB @1 kHz; +4 dB @3 kHz; +5 dB highshelf @6 kHz
• LSP loud_comp_stereo equal-loudness contour (ISO 226:2023)
• a missing-fundamental bass enhancer (low-pass 170 Hz → square → sqrt → high-pass, mixed back in with mixer), which is what finally stopped it sounding like a phone, since the drivers can't move much air down low
• ends in limiter_stereo

Measured effect of the enhancer: playing a pure 100 Hz tone, 2nd-harmonic content
rose ~19 dB (dry vs tuned, via the mic) — the ear then reads the low note that the
driver cannot physically produce.

Why not a PR. It's a reasoned, ear-shaped voicing, not a measured correction. I
don't have a calibrated measurement mic, so I can't produce the
magnitude_rms_db / bass_group_delay_swing_ms / limiter_headroom_db /
dynamic_range_delta_lu fields docs/audio-tuning.md asks a tuning to report.

Precedent. #8621 is the closest filed item, but it is a different machine and a
different cause (DX13260 / SKU 0E53, CS35L56 sidecar amps never enabled).

Ask. Please ship a tuning for SKU 0AF3, or say which target curve to fit so the
local one can become a proper PR.

[nazariitaran]

Hey guys - opening this issue because my agent suggested it's worth flagging. I installed Omarchy on my 4-year-old Dell, and the audio sounds different compared to Windows on the same machine.

Fixed with the agent

[Lorde627]

Hey Nazariitran, I ran into the exact same issue. I noticed you managed to fix it, so would you mind sharing how you solved it?

[nazariitaran]

Hey @Lorde627 - sure, i've created a gist for you to have a look at. https://gist.github.com/nazariitaran/c54eab0dff734ff512c807c32eaa610c

Note that this requires tuning by ear and my "fixed" could be different to your "fixed", but for me it sounds fine 😄

[Lorde627]

Thanks a lot, I'll take a look at that too. I am currently trying to reverse-engineer the relevant configurations for Arch from the audio driver package provided by Dell for Windows, which includes the Waves MaxxAudio tuning stuff.

[Lorde627]

Hey @nazariitaran, thanks again for sharing your gist! A quick update on the reverse-engineering work I mentioned earlier: I've now reverse-engineered the relevant speaker DSP and tuning from Dell's Windows audio driver package and ported the processing chain to Linux using native LV2 plugins and PipeWire, including volume-dependent dynamics.

I've published the source, installation instructions, and uninstall/rollback tools here:
https://github.com/Lorde627/xps9320-linux-audio