Copy pasting this from my arch forums post with small edits because nobody replied to me there

I have this weird issue where the builtin speakers work fine until I plug something into the 3.5mm jack and unplug it. The audio jack output is fine, but after unplugging it, the builtin speakers start sounding very scratchy and crackly. I guess I can only describe it as feeling like the diaphragm is damaged. I am guessing this has to do something with sample rate, as I had a similar but much less intense audio quality issue happen ALL the time on both the builtin speakers and the audio jack, which I fixed by setting the sample rate to 48kHz from 44.1. This happens on all linux distros I tried, even an archiso liveusb with very minimal alsa (I used speaker-test to verify the issue).
Any help? My laptop is an Asus ROG GL504.

Chek your mixer channels before and after, all of them (capture and playback), for pulseaudio AND ALSA.
Check the journal.
What distro was this?

I checked them with pavucontrol and alsamixer. Nothing unusual seems to be going on, only the automatic switching between builtin speakers/audiojack and changing volume.

on journalctl I get messages when plugging and unplugging, but nothing else.

I'm running Arch but the issue was present on Manjaro and Mint as well.

Dirt or oxidisation in the plug?
I'm not saying it must be a hardware problem, but you should consider this.
Also search some of the messages you get in the journal (there must be more and others), e.g. like this.

It is definitely not a hardware issue, as it doesn't happen on Windows, but even if it did, that still doesn't explain why the quality is bad only after unplugging the 3.5mm jack.
Couldn't find anything else relating to the journal logs.