KDE Audio Problem - not new; partial solution

F31 on a new Dell Inspiron w/ audio Intel Cannon Lake PCH cAVS vendor: Dell driver: sof-audio-pci bus ID: 00:1f.3 using Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.5.16-200.fc31.x86_64.

The oddness is the new inability to switch to using the headphones “automagically” or by forcing it with the system and audio config options. I see many users have been having this problem, with some pointing at pulse-audio and some pointing at alsa as the problem.

I just discovered that booting with the headphone jack in allows me to use the headphones, and (of course) booting without the headphone jack allows me to use the speakers. Can’t switch to headphones from speakers, though. Removing the headphone jack always enables the speakers, however.

It’s inconvenient, but workable. Almost.