Mine is Gen9. I could go for Gen10, but that would be a good bit more expensive, and I don't need the additional performance. I think I'd rather go for a Dell XPS then, which would be like one third of the price.

It is not Linux related, the sound is the same before I even booted Linux and go into the Bios settings for example. If you check the Google link in my post, you can see that it is a common problem with Lenovo.

I found this page that says applying superglue to the right component might fix it:

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/how-to-quickly-ea...

But I'm not sure if I want to do that to a laptop I just bought. Success seems kinda uncertain, but it certainly voids any right to return it.