Dell TB16 (thunderbolt docking station) USB Audio volume is too low. H/W: Dell XPS 9560 + Dell TB16 O/S: Fedora 27 fully updated. $ cat /proc/asound/cards 0 [PCH ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH HDA Intel PCH at 0xed128000 irq 159 1 [Audio ]: USB-Audio - USB Audio Generic USB Audio at usb-0000:0e:00.0-1.5, high speed $ amixer -c1 Simple mixer control 'Mic',0 Capabilities: cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Capture 0 - 127 Front Left: Capture 99 [78%] [16.00dB] [on] Front Right: Capture 99 [78%] [16.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Extension Unit',0 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Mono: Playback [off] Simple mixer control 'Loudness',0 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Mono: Playback [off] According to PulseAudio, card 1 don't seem to have any playback volume controls. Read more here: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=105138 btw, on Windows the volume control works as expected - but on Linux there is no h/w volume control (on a dual boot system the volume is set to whatever Windows last time set).
I think I have the same issue. The front and rear jacks of the TB16 were working under fedora's 4.13 though and then 4.14 the rear jack appears to not work. I've had to jack up the input and output volumes (>250%) on the output just to have the sound play at a decent level out of the front jack and I'm unable now (4.15) to get the output in the back to play regardless of setting the volume level. Everything under windows works fine. I'm unable to run amixer -c1 and in general all of my also controls do not seem to work with the "card 1" (which is the tb16 card). amixer: Mixer hw:1 load error: Invalid argument. The .conf and udev rules are and have been installed, which is what made it work in 4.13 so nicely.
>$ pactl -- set-sink-volume >alsa_output.usb-Generic_USB_Audio_200901010001-00.analog-stereo-speaker +1000% no sound from speaker-test. >$ pacmd list-sinks | grep -e "name:" -e "index:" -e "base volume:" > index: 1 > name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo > base volume: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB > index: 2 > name: <combined> > base volume: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB > * index: 3 > name: ><alsa_output.usb-Generic_USB_Audio_200901010001-00.analog-stereo-speaker> > base volume: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
I have noticed that the speaker-test using "speaker-test -D plughw:1,1" now works from a terminal under kernel 4.15.7, it did not under earlier 4.15 kernels. I'm unable to use amixer on that card though: >$ amixer -c1 >amixer: Mixer hw:1 load error: Invalid argument Sound management through the pulse audio volume also seems to work.
I am having the exact same issue as the first poster with the Dell WD15 docking station (same Realtek chipset as TB16) If I boot into Windows and set the volume at 100%, then reboot to Linux (Ubuntu 17.10) everything works as expected. Boot into Windows and turn the volume down, when in Linux this becomes the maximum volume. Mute the output in windows, and in Linux there is no sound at all.
I found with the latest 4.16 or 4.17 kernels things went back to normal for me. I also ensured I had upgraded to the latest linux firmware.