Quoting J M Needham <J.M.Needham(a)bath.ac.uk>uk>: I think it was position_fix=1 . There are some other parameters as well, like "model" but google can tell you more about their use than me. If you run the command line "alsamixer", it will tell you the actual chip in question. Googling for that chip and alsa or ubuntu or whatever might give you a straight answer on what parameters should be set. Another option would be to google your specific laptop model and ubuntu, or hda intel etc. Sampo