I've been using Ubuntu 20.04 for the last few months on my old Dell Inspiron 3558 laptop and it's working like a charm. Recently, I bought a new laptop, a Dell Inspiron 3501, and it came pre-installed with Windows 10. So I dual-booted Ubuntu 20.04 on it to check if everything is working fine and later I wanted to remove Windows completely and install Ubuntu as my primary OS.

After installation, everything is working fine, except for the audio output. The sound kind of crackles. It works perfectly fine on Windows though.

I tested the built-in speakers, Bluetooth headset, and output from 3.5 mm audio jack, but no difference. I tried YouTube videos and local audio and video files, but the outcome is the same. I tried many online solutions, but without any success. I also installed Ubuntu 21.04 to check if the new kernel brings any improvement, but the condition was the same. So I installed Ubuntu 20.04 back, since I'm more comfortable with the LTS version.

I'm a front-end web developer and I feel comfortable with basic command line, but I still consider myself a Linux newbie. Please help me solve this problem.

Hardware specs:

• Processor: 11th Generation Intel Core i5-1135G7


• RAM: 16 GB DDR4


• Audio: Cirrus Logic CS8409 (CS42L42 + SN005825)


• Storage: 256 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD


• Display 15.6 Inch 1920x1080 FHD


• GPU: Integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics


• More info: Dell Inspiron 3501

EDIT:

I'm able to listen to the audio but it's crackling.

lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9a14 (rev 01)

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 9a49 (rev 01)

00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Device 9a03 (rev 01)

00:0a.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Device 9a0d (rev 01)

00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Device a0ed (rev 20)

00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Device a0ef (rev 20)

00:14.3 Network controller: Intel Corporation Device a0f0 (rev 20)

00:15.0 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device a0e8 (rev 20)

00:15.1 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device a0e9 (rev 20)

00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Device a0e0 (rev 20)

00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Device a0d3 (rev 20)

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device a0bc (rev 20)

00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device a0b0 (rev 20)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device a082 (rev 20)

00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Device a0c8 (rev 20)

00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Device a0a3 (rev 20)

00:1f.5 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device a0a4 (rev 20)

01:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Sandisk Corp Device 5007 (rev 01)

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)

lspci -v output for 00:1f.3 (audio device):

00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Device a0c8 (rev 20)

    Subsystem: Dell Device 0a25

    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 149

    Memory at 6001138000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]

    Memory at 6001000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]

    Capabilities: <access denied>

    Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel

    Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel, snd_sof_pci