Sound problem on Dell Vostro 3400: Audio device got stuck

I got a Dell Vostro 3400 laptop (11th gen Intel, Tiger Lake), and Fedora works quite well on it, except for the audio part. That part is a real nightmare. I first installed F35 on it and hoped that upgrade to F36 will fix it, but the problem persists, so I have no choice but to seek help from the community.

First, the built-in Tiger Lake audio doesn’t work at all. That issue was already reported twice (#1993660 and #2007900), neither of the reports received any comments.

Second, an external audio device isn’t a satisfactory solution either. I have a Jabra EVOLVE 20 MS USB headset. I’ve been using it with two different machines: an 8th gen Intel NUC running Fedora 35 and the Dell Vostro 3400 laptop in question.

On the NUC, it works without any issues. On the laptop, it stops working at random intervals and I have to unplug it and plug it back to get it working again.

When it’s not working, trying to play any audio with e.g. mplayer results in:

Starting playback...
A:   0.0 (unknown) of 96.0 (01:36.0) ??,?%                                                                                                                                                                                                   
Audio device got stuck!

What I tried so far:

  • Disabling the built-in audio in the UEFI settings: doesn’t help the external audio interface issue, it still gets stuck.
  • Switching from Pipewire back to PulseAudio: neither makes the built-in device work nor keeps the external device from getting stuck.
  • Tested in GNOME3 instead of my usual MATE desktop environment, just in case: no change at all.

Unfortunately, I’m not an expert in audio at all so I’m stuck. What steps can I take to find the source of this issue and report it to the right upstream project?