I think you’re hitting an issue with Asus firmware and the cirrus amp they used in their laptops. The root of the problem, as I understand, is Asus system firmware does not identify the audio card/amp properly. Technically the drivers are present in the kernel and can be remapped with workarounds (see the arch wiki), but I found them complicated and didn’t want to risk borking anything in the kernel or bootloader.
I’m just getting old, hoping for the day Asus fixes their firmware and everything clicks together.