Hi Everyone,
I have a Logitech headset with a microphone. It has two 3.5mm jacks that you need to connect seperately (audio/mic).
Audio is working great but I am not able to get the mic working.
I triple checked kde mixer and made sure that nothing is muted.
Still failing the Skype call / microphone test.
This headset has been tested to work fine in a windows system.
Any ideas on how to make this work? TIA!!
Install pavolcontrol if you already have not done so.
Have it running when using skype it may allow adjustment . Also make sure that the skype setting are set to pulse
Thanks for the reply.
Installed pavucontrol and tried all options under configuration.
Still the same though… Audio working fine but mic is unusable
OK, I went back to kde mixer and it seems that it is not showing any capture devices.
What does pvvolcontrol say the input device is? is any shown? Did you set it up in yast?
Thank you for the fast reply and for helping me on this, gogalthorp 
In volume control, it only shows the monitor as the input device. It will show nothing if I choose to show all input devices except for monitors.
Are you asking if I’ve setup the sound card in YaST? if so, Haswell HD audio controller is setup as sound card 0 and Lynx Point HD audio controller as sound card 1
Try reversing the order make the Lynx Point HD audio controller 0
If none of the other suggestions work, it would help if you could provide us some detailed configuration information (by running a diagnostic script) with your headphone mic plugged in, so that we could see better the configuration your PC has in place. You can do so by running as a regular user, with PC connected to the internet, sending the following command in an Xterm/konsole and let the script run to completion. Select SHARE/UPLOAD when prompted. Do not update if asked to update. When the script completes, it will place a URL/web-address in the xterm/konsole. Please copy that URL/web address here.
/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh
I’m on vacation a continent away from my apartment, so my responses may be some what slow and erratic in coming.
Tried it and restarted. No luck, my friend 
I tried the command three times but I keep on getting “an error occured while contacting www.alsa-project.org”
I have the .txt log file saved but I don’t see an option here to attach the file 
and the alsa info is too long to wrap the text in
Thanks for the assistance. I'll try later and see if it would be able to contact the website/URLYour PC needs to be attached to the Internet when the script is run. I just ran the script on my Ultrabook (here in Phuket Thailand) and it works fine.
Worst case, you can always copy the entire text and paste it on http://susepaste.org/ and press ‘create’ and post here the URL.
Tried it again, no luck bro… My desktop is always connected to the internet. I am actually using it to post in the forums
I wonder why it doesn’t like me.
Anyway I posted the result in susepaste as suggested, URL below:
Oh, I hope you enjoy your stay in Thailand! Be sure to try and ride the tuk tuk I’m just in a nearby country, btw - Philippines.
That command should have worked and should have uploaded the configuration. I hope you understand what a konsole/xterm is (apologies for noting that, but it is difficult at times to understand the level of knowledge of users on the forum). Do not send the script command in a ‘run’ command line execution window, which is not the same thing.
Thanks for that.
From the script output, I note that the script gives this for your MIC :
ARECORD
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
**card 1**: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], **device 0**: ALC887-VD Analog [ALC887-VD Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
**card 1**: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], **device 2**: ALC887-VD Alt Analog [ALC887-VD Alt Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
ie there are two recording devices. One is hw:1,0 and the other is hw:1,2.
I note your PC mixer has your mic capture badly misconfigured making it impossible to record sound. You need to fix that configuration.
Let me starting by noting that playback volume at 0% so it is difficult to determine if it is capturing any sound. I would not use that setting myself as it complicates this:
**Simple mixer control 'Front Mic',0**
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 31
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 0 **[0%]** -34.50dB] [on]
Front Right: Playback 0 **[0%]** -34.50dB] [on]
Note the boost is at 0% making capture difficult (see below). I recommend you increase this from 0% to 67%:
**Simple mixer control 'Front Mic Boost',0**
Capabilities: volume
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: 0 - 3
Front Left: 0 **[0%]** [0.00dB]
Front Right: 0 **[0%]** [0.00dB]
Note your mixer has capture disabled (0% capture and also OFF) - muting all capture for ‘capture-0’ and making audio recording impossible:
**Simple mixer control 'Capture',0**
Capabilities: cvolume cswitch
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Capture 0 - 46
Front Left: Capture 0 **[0%] **-16.00dB] **[off]**
Front Right: Capture 0 **[0%]** -16.00dB] **[off]**
Note the same is true for capture-1 which has all possible audio recording disabled:
**Simple mixer control 'Capture',1**
Capabilities: cvolume cswitch
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Capture 0 - 46
Front Left: Capture 0 **[0%]** -16.00dB] **[off]**
Front Right: Capture 0 **[0%]** -16.00dB] **[off]**
I note your mixer has your PC setup to use the ‘Front Mic’, and not the ‘Rear Mic’ nor the ‘Line’ input for mic. Is that what you want ?
**Simple mixer control 'Input Source',0**
Capabilities: cenum
Items: 'Front Mic' 'Rear Mic' 'Line'
Item0: '**Front Mic'**
**Simple mixer control 'Input Source',1**
Capabilities: cenum
Items: 'Front Mic' 'Rear Mic' 'Line'
Item0: '**Front Mic'**
and finally, I note your Rear Mic non-optimally configured also:
**Simple mixer control 'Rear Mic',0**
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 31
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 0 **[0%]** -34.50dB] [on]
Front Right: Playback 0 **[0%]** -34.50dB] [on]
**Simple mixer control 'Rear Mic Boost',0**
Capabilities: volume
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: 0 - 3
Front Left: 0 **[0%]** [0.00dB]
Front Right: 0 **[0%]** [0.00dB]
You need to fix the mixer configuration.
AFTER, and ONLY AFTER you fix the mixer configuration, you can try this in an xterm/konsole for hw:1,0 to record sound with device hw:1,0:
arecord -vv -f S16_LE -c2 -D hw:1,0 new.wav
You can stop the recording by pressing . And then play back new.wav file with a video or audio player to see if any sound recorded.
and try this to record sound with device hw:1,2:
arecord -vv -f S16_LE -c2 -D hw:1,2 new.wav
BUT FIRST you need to fix the PC’s mixer configuration.
Good luck.
Thanks ! I’m heading from Phuket to Krabi tomorrow, and I won’t have Internet access for a few days, so it may be Monday before I look at this thread again.
I tried connecting the headset using the ports on the back of the desktop yesterday and it seems to be working fine.
I tried the command again (so we can determine what’s causing the problem), this time both in konsole and xterm but I am still getting the error that the website cannot be contacted.
I posted the results at http://susepaste.org/46501545
I am fine with the headset connected at the back but it’ll be more convenient if I can connect it using the ports on the front side of the desktop.
Thanks for the assistance.
Different location may show up as different source/sink so you need to use the right “device”. Note that device is very lose definition and it could mean just a different interface on the same chip set.
The port at the side is either called ‘front mic’ or ‘line’ (not sure which). Likely by trial and error its best if you figure out the naming convention for your hardware.
Note you can not easily record now with Front mic as configured:
Simple mixer control 'Front Mic',0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 31
Mono:
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
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: 0 - 3
Front Left: 0 **[0%]** [0.00dB]
Front Right: 0 **[0%]** [0.00dB]
where playback (so to monitor recording) is 0% and boost is at 0%. Its quite common on many PCs that there is no recording with 0% boost.
I see now you have capture-0 unmuted, but you still have capture-1 muted:
**Simple mixer control 'Capture',0**
Capabilities: cvolume cswitch
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Capture 0 - 46
Front Left: Capture 46 [100%] [30.00dB] [on]
Front Right: Capture 46 [100%] [30.00dB] [on]
**Simple mixer control 'Capture',1**
Capabilities: cvolume cswitch
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Capture 0 - 46
Front Left: Capture 0** [0%]** -16.00dB] **[off]**
Front Right: Capture 0** [0%]** -16.00dB]** [off]**
when I check the Mic assignments I noted:
**Simple mixer control 'Input Source',0**
Capabilities: cenum
Items: 'Front Mic' 'Rear Mic' 'Line'
Item0: 'Rear Mic'
**Simple mixer control 'Input Source',1**
Capabilities: cenum
Items: 'Front Mic' 'Rear Mic' 'Line'
Item0:** 'Front Mic'**
where source-0 (ie capture-0) is assigned to the Rear Mic and source-1 (ie capture-1) is assigned to the Front Mic. But we already know Capture-1 is muted, and Front Mic is at 0% boost. ie your Front Mic is not configured hence recording is not possible.
ie Your PCs mixer is still misconfigured. My guess is this is all still pretty new to you and a bad thing about GNU/Linux is that it provides far too many options for something that should be fairly basic.
Good luck in your efforts to fix the misconfiguration.
At least I can make it work for the meantime. I’ll figure this out.
Thanks to both of you
Any luck yet with the desktop’s front mic ?
If necessary, I may be able to provide some amixer commands that will force the front mic activation, … although typically rather than mess with amixer syntax, it is easier to configure such with alsamixer application.