8280I on board sound card problem

English Multimedia
#1

Hello I have the following on-board soundcard

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)

which gets recognized in kde as (found it in kde’s control center)

HDA Intel (Realtek ALC883)

.

I have the following two problems concerning sound

a)There is so much noise when I have to speak in microphone and I really need το speak loud (mic is turned on and configured in the highest microphone level)
b) I get a constant noise in speakers. Actually is a constant background noise of a very high frequency.
c) It seems that the aforementioned noise, as mentioned in point b, it is also added in to the microphone input. When I do a voice call with skype the guy who I am talking to complains about that noise and asks me to terminate the call.

For me is more like a driver problem. I am running latest opensuse which is updated frequently.

I would like to thank you in advance for your help
Best Regards
Alex.

#2

Often this is a problem with your mic’s mixer configuration.

What is the output of amixer? You can get that by typing:

amixer > amixer.txt

and open amixer.txt with a text editor and post it on PasteBin.be and press ‘dump’ on that site and post here the URL it provides. Post here the URL not the amixer content

This can be caused by poor grounding. Switch OFF your PC, and if the power plug is a two pronged plug, reverse it 180 degrees. Check the cabling around your PC for possible interference sources.

Again, check your cabling around your PC. Check your electrical grounding.

What is your openSUSE version? What desktop are you using?

Pulse audio in gnome has also been known to cause similar problems.

#3

PasteBin.be

Thanks for your help. I ll check the other things you suggested earlier (as I cannot turn of my computer).

#4

There are some settings in your Mixer that I believe you need to tune better. They may be contributing to this problem.

Simple mixer control ‘Front Mic’,0
Front Left: Playback 0 [0%] -34.50dB] [on]
Front Right: Playback 0 [0%] -34.50dB] [on]
**Simple mixer control ‘Front Mic Boost’,0 **
Capabilities: volume
Front Left: 0 [0%]
Front Right: 0 [0%]
**Simple mixer control ‘Mic’,0 **
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
Front Left: Playback 0 [0%] -34.50dB] [on]
Front Right: Playback 0 [0%] -34.50dB] [on]
**Simple mixer control ‘Mic Boost’,0 **
Capabilities: volume
Front Left: 0 [0%]
Front Right: 0 [0%]
**Simple mixer control ‘Capture’,0 **
Capabilities: cvolume cswitch
Front Left: Capture 29 [94%] [31.50dB] [on]
Front Right: Capture 29 [94%] [31.50dB] [on]
**Simple mixer control ‘Capture’,1 **
Capabilities: cvolume cswitch
Front Left: Capture 26 [84%] [27.00dB] [off]
Front Right: Capture 26 [84%] [27.00dB] [off]
**Simple mixer control ‘Digital’,0 **
Capabilities: cvolume
Front Left: Capture 2 [2%] -29.00dB]
Front Right: Capture 2 [2%] -29.00dB]
Simple mixer control ‘Input Source’,0
Capabilities: cenum
Items: ‘Mic’ ‘Front Mic’ ‘Line’
Item0: 'Mic’
Simple mixer control ‘Input Source’,1
Capabilities: cenum
Items: ‘Mic’ ‘Front Mic’ ‘Line’
Item0: ‘Mic’ As near as I can determine, your PC has two mic inputs, a “mic” and a “front mic”. It also has a “digital mic”. Since you refer to an on-board sound card, I assume this is a desktop with no digital mic implemented. Is that correct?

You have this setup to use the “Mic” and not the “Front Mic”. Is that the correct setting?

You have the “boost” set to Zero. Sometimes its necessary to tune the boost. 0% may be bad. 100% may be best. 100% may be horrible. Its possible 33% or 66% are better settings.

Should the mic playback be at 0%. Did you try other settings?

I confess the settings in your PCs mixer are suspect, although I believe your PC may also have other problems wrt the mic.

#5

Do you not know the answer to this question? Do you need help figuring this out?

#6

PasteBin.be

Thanks for help. This is my new alsamixer configuration. I am using the latest opensuse 11.2 .

I have checked the power cable but it is a three pronged plug.

It seems that the background noice is removed but unfortunately I cannot record anything with the microphone!!!

Best Regards
Alex

#7

Was that supposed to be better ? Its not. Its worse.

Please, this takes me a lot of time to copy and paste your post, edit out the line numbers, and remove extraneous lines to show what is wrong.

Below is the LAST time I do this. You need to be more careful. Sorry. But I just don’t have that much time.

#Simple mixer control ‘Front Mic’,0

Capabilities: pvolume pswitch

Front Left: Playback 0 [0%] -34.50dB] [off]

Front Right: Playback 0 [0%] -34.50dB] [off]

#Simple mixer control ‘Front Mic Boost’,0

Capabilities: volume

Front Left: 0 [0%]

Front Right: 0 [0%]

#Simple mixer control ‘Mic’,0

Capabilities: pvolume pswitch

Front Left: Playback 0 [0%] -34.50dB] [off]

Front Right: Playback 0 [0%] -34.50dB] [off]

#Simple mixer control ‘Mic Boost’,0

Capabilities: volume

Front Left: 0 [0%]

Front Right: 0 [0%]

#Simple mixer control ‘Capture’,0

Capabilities: cvolume cswitch

Front Left: Capture 31 [100%] [34.50dB] [on]

Front Right: Capture 31 [100%] [34.50dB] [on]

#Simple mixer control ‘Capture’,1

Capabilities: cvolume cswitch

Front Left: Capture 0 [0%] -12.00dB] [off]

Front Right: Capture 0 [0%] -12.00dB] [off]

#Simple mixer control ‘Digital’,0

Capabilities: cvolume

Front Left: Capture 0 [0%] -30.00dB]

Front Right: Capture 0 [0%] -30.00dB]

#Simple mixer control ‘Input Source’,0

Capabilities: cenum

Items: ‘Mic’ ‘Front Mic’ ‘Line’

Item0: ‘Mic’

#Simple mixer control ‘Input Source’,1

Capabilities: cenum

Items: ‘Mic’ ‘Front Mic’ ‘Line’

Item0: ‘Mic’ How do you expect to capture any audio with the capture muted in most places, and with the boost at 0%. You won’t capture ANYTHING that way.

So please try to fix that in your mixers settings.

In case there is some other reason, in addition to the mixer settings that you DO have mixed up, please ensure your mixer is set EXACTLY the way you think it should be to record, and then also run, with your pc connected to the internet, the diagnostic script:

/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh

and select SHARE/UPLOAD and post here the URL it provides. JUST the URL

#8

Thanks for the help! I am a little bit confused about the correct settings. I have tried to mute completely the Front mic and unmute the other default microphone.

Thanks for help I ll try and I ll post back!

#9

Hello again. Even though I haven’t managed to fix the microphone problem here are some results regarding the high-frequency background noise.

-The background noise is always present even if EVERYTHING is muted/disabled/unselected from kmix.
-The background noise gets worse when :
1.pcm volume turns on.
2.microphone volume turns on
3. microphone boost turns on.

I think probably this has to do with the grounding you just told me to fix. I have checked the power cable and it is a 3 prounged cable.

What do you mean by “check the around computer cabling” and check the electrical grounding.
Best Regards
Thanks

#10

PROBLEM SOLVED!
You are a real imba professional super guy! I just changed the socket in which the power cable was plugged in! It is a miracle! The problem no longer exists! I hope more members will read this post in future to solve their own problems.

#11

Thanks again for your replies. The problem seems to be something that is determined during boot time. If the noise for example during boot time appears then it will be constant for the whole time till the next shut-down, power on iteration.

So this make your argument, about the poor grounding, stronger.So could you please provide me information how to check the cables and how to improve computer’s grounding?

I would like to thank you in advance for your help
Best Regards
Alex.

#12

If you had asked me 35 years ago, I have been able to give you a better answer. Today ? I pretty much forget all my detailed electrical engineering.

I believe there are small inexpensive devices one can purchase, to plug in to an electical outlet, to confirm its grounding.

Over 12 years ago, I recall when I lived in Asia, a friend purchased a couple of new computers and the friend and his wife would get a small electrical shock every time they touched their computer case. It was annoying. The wall outlet was a 3 pronged outlet, presumeably with grounding. We had no test tools, but we did have a 3 pronged to two pronged adapter … So we plugged the computer’s 3 pronged plug into the 3 prong to 2 pronged adaptor, and plugged that into the wall outlet. The computer still worked, and the electrical shock was still there. No surprise.

So we turned the computer OFF, rotated the 2 pronged plug adapter 180 degrees and plugged it in again to the wall outlet. We turned on the PC. There was no electrical shock!

This meant one of the 2 wires with electrical current were the “floating” ground.

I told my friend my guess was the ground connection was either NOT wired behind the front plate , or the wired connection to the ground had a problem. So my friend turned OFF all the electrical power to that outlet, removed the cover plate, and he looked at the wiring behind. We needed a flash light to see as all the room lights were out with the power being shut down to do this check. But sure enough, there was no wiring to the ground plug. The house contractor had “cut corners” here.

To implement grounding is not something I have done myself. An electrician would know. In essence one has to run the electrical signal from every power outlet to a location on the house/building, where some sort of conducter takes the signal to the earth.

So apologies, but as to your question, … I really can’t answer this. Someone who is an electrician who is more familiar with the proper way to do this probably needs to answer.

#13

Please note, I do not recommend this course of action.

Someone who does not know what they are doing could ELECTROCUTE themselves and die. …

My friend was a technician, and he had done some very limited wiring before, so he was familiar with necessary safety requirements to be followed.

#14

Thanks a lot for all this feedback!
Actually I am not allowed to even touch my hardware. I have contacted the system administrator here and he suggested to try to buy an internal or external sound card to solve this problem.

I told him to wait for a few days to try to search for it. I do not want to charge my company for a sound card if this will not fix the problem. IF there is a power leakage problem probably this will not be solved from an internal sound card. Maybe the problem might be alleviated from an external usb sound card.

Anyway technical administrator (cool guy) told me to propose my suggestion and just give me a link for the hardware I would like my company to buy for me.

I do not know if i could suggest him to buy me an internal or external soundcard.
What do you believe?

If you make a hardware suggestion please provide something that is Linux compatible.

Thanks for your help
Best Regards
Alex

#15

I have no hardware suggestions.

If the electrical grounding where you work is not good, no suggestion of mine will help.

#16

So do you imply that buing another sound card will never solve my problem?

#17

One final thought before i drop computer! I have some external usb speakers at home. So I was thinking the following : Use the usb speakers in my pc… if there is no background noise then If i try to buy an external usb sound card . Everything will work fine for me. What do you think?

Best Regards
Alex

#18

Again, I repeat this.

#19

Thanks again!

This is what I tested. I used some external usb speakers that I brought from home. I removed completely using Yast the built-in sound card. I have clear and nice sound coming out from usb speakers!

There is still some high-frequency background noise in the speakers that are connected to the old-disabled build in sound card.

Perhaps this is an indicator that the power grounding is ok and the built-in soundcard has some sort of deficiency.

Do you agree with my comment?

Best Regards
Alex

#20

Problem Solved!!!
I bought this external usb sound card

SPEED-LINK UltraPortable Audio Card externe Soundkarte USB
SPEED-LINK UltraPortable Audio Card externe Soundkarte: Amazon.de: Elektronik

and there is no more problem in my sound. Clear sound in skype phone calls :slight_smile:
Works fine