Dell XPS 13 Ubuntu 20.04 select audio device no sound when no selection made (or pressing escape)

alsactl restore causes sound to come out from both laptop speaker and headphones simultaneously.

To get sound from the wired headphones one has to open Sound Settings, go to Input and select Internal Microphone Built-in Audio every time headphones are connected to the 3.5mm jack. Observed the same on Dell XPS 13 and Dell 75-series gaming laptops.

Looks like a 20.04 bug. Reproducible in Cinnamon and KDE Plasma DEs. In 18.04 there was no such issue.

I had the same issue. I fixed it by switching to Konsole and running:

alsactl restore

What fixes it for me is:

• Go to sound preferences
• Click on the input tab
• Under connector, choose Internal microphone