Hello, I recently came across some audio / video issues with Kubuntu. My headphone jack stopped working out of the blue, could have been something I installed. Anyway, what was happening is the audio was popping when I was fooling with the settings but I couldn't get sound out of the thing. The popping is not new, it does this when the system starts up and when switching between internal speakers and headphone jack. Then, I came across an article that instructed putting a line in alsa-base.conf. I tried that, and the next boot my screens started flickering. Little dark rectangles about 10x4 show up for about a half second and go away. It seems like as the CPU was getting more "taxed" with network traffic and windows open it was happening more often. On the good side, I was able to get sound out of my headphone jack. I couldn't live with the displays not working properly so I set my alsa-base.conf back to how it was by commenting out the line that I added.

Weirdly enough, after I commented out the line and rebooted I still got audio through the headphone jack. I am running an updated kernel - as I was not getting full hardware support on the one right out of the box. There were some issues with my laptop doc / usb devices.

Linux audio has always been an achilles heal in any distribution. Has anyone else came across this issue? Below is all of my information:

Code:
neech@neech-linux:~$ sudo lspci
[sudo] password for neech: 
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 8th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 07)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor PCIe Controller (x16) (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 630 (Mobile)
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor Thermal Subsystem (rev 07)
00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/v6 / E3-1500 v5 / 6th/7th/8th Gen Core Processor Gaussian Mixture Model
00:12.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH Thermal Controller (rev 10)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH USB 3.1 xHCI Host Controller (rev 10)
00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH Shared SRAM (rev 10)
00:15.0 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH Serial IO I2C Controller #0 (rev 10)
00:15.1 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH Serial IO I2C Controller #1 (rev 10)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH HECI Controller (rev 10)
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake Mobile PCH SATA AHCI Controller (rev 10)
00:1b.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port #17 (rev f0)
00:1b.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port #21 (rev f0)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev f0)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port #6 (rev f0)
00:1c.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port #7 (rev f0)
00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port #9 (rev f0)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device a30e (rev 10)
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH cAVS (rev 10)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH SMBus Controller (rev 10)
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH SPI Controller (rev 10)
00:1f.6 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (7) I219-LM (rev 10)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Baffin [Radeon Pro WX 4130/4150]
01:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Baffin HDMI/DP Audio [Radeon RX 550 640SP / RX 560/560X]
02:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM981/PM981/PM983
03:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM981/PM981/PM983
04:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
05:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
05:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
05:02.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
05:04.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
06:00.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 NHI [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
3a:00.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 USB Controller [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
6f:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5260 PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)
70:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 32)
71:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM981/PM981/PM983

neech@neech-linux:~$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
# autoloader aliases
install sound-slot-0 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-0
install sound-slot-1 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-1
install sound-slot-2 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-2
install sound-slot-3 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-3
install sound-slot-4 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-4
install sound-slot-5 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-5
install sound-slot-6 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-6
install sound-slot-7 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-7

# Cause optional modules to be loaded above generic modules
install snd /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-ioctl32 ; /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq ; }
#
# Workaround at bug #499695 (reverted in Ubuntu see LP #319505)
install snd-pcm /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-pcm $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-pcm-oss ; : ; }
install snd-mixer /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-mixer $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-mixer-oss ; : ; }
install snd-seq /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-seq $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq-midi ; /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq-oss ; : ; }
#
install snd-rawmidi /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-rawmidi $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq-midi ; : ; }
# Cause optional modules to be loaded above sound card driver modules
install snd-emu10k1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-emu10k1 $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-emu10k1-synth ; }
install snd-via82xx /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-via82xx $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq ; }

# Load saa7134-alsa instead of saa7134 (which gets dragged in by it anyway)
install saa7134 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install saa7134 $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist saa7134-alsa ; : ; }
# Prevent abnormal drivers from grabbing index 0
options bt87x index=-2
options cx88_alsa index=-2
options saa7134-alsa index=-2
options snd-atiixp-modem index=-2
options snd-intel8x0m index=-2
options snd-via82xx-modem index=-2
options snd-usb-audio index=-2
options snd-usb-caiaq index=-2
options snd-usb-ua101 index=-2
options snd-usb-us122l index=-2
options snd-usb-usx2y index=-2
# Ubuntu #62691, enable MPU for snd-cmipci
options snd-cmipci mpu_port=0x330 fm_port=0x388
# Keep snd-pcsp from being loaded as first soundcard
options snd-pcsp index=-2
# Keep snd-usb-audio from beeing loaded as first soundcard
options snd-usb-audio index=-2

# user added inputs
# *** USING THIS CAUSED MY SCREEN TO FLICKER ***
#options snd-hda-intel model=headset-mode

neech@neech-linux:~$ uname -r
5.8.0-29-generic