In July last year I installed OpenSuSE 11.0 in my HP Pavillion dv6736nr and had problems with sound. I got a lot of attention and help in this forum, specially from oldcpu. However I was unable to solve all problems and decided to go back to OpenSuSE 10.3. In OpenSuSE 10.3, sound, including Microphone, works OK. I decided to install OpenSuSE 11.1 in another partition of my laptop (the machine I am using). Everything is alright but the internal microphone. I reviewed what oldcpu asked from me in July and I am posting below the information.
uuuuuu@dv6736nr:~> arecord -d 10 myrecording.wav
Recording WAVE ‘myrecording.wav’ : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
uuuuuu@dv6736nr:~> aplay myrecording.wav
Playing WAVE ‘myrecording.wav’ : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
==> Result: No Sound comes out of speaker
uuuuuu@dv6736nr:~> arecord -d 10 -f cd mysecondrecording.wav
Recording WAVE ‘mysecondrecording.wav’ : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Stereo
uuuuuu@dv6736nr:~> aplay myrecording.wav
Playing WAVE ‘myrecording.wav’ : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
==> Result: No Sound comes out of speaker
I had a similar prob using Audacity, as I couldn’t seem to record the audio of a video file as it was playing. During the course of events I found I had inadvertently turned the internal mic on, and discovered how I did that when I turned it off.
The prob with v11.1 imho is that it uses the somewhat functionally limited PulseAudio as it’s default application for sound.
I got around this by going control center/sound and defaulting everything back to (in my case) SiS SI7012(alsa).
Then I right-clicked over the task bar/add to panel/application launcher/multimedia/volume control. There you will find several references to choose from, all but one (the last option on my PC) refer to PulseAudio. Click on the one that says just “Volume Control” with no reference to PulseAudio, then click add.
You should then see a different type of volume control on your task bar. This is the alsa volume control. Click it, and you will then be able to enable your internal mic and alter any levels you may desire, for recording or playback.
I deleted the installed PulseAudio volume control from my task bar in favour of the alsa one described above, and haven’t looked back.
PulseAudio simply just doesn’t have the functionality of alsa, makes me wonder why openSuse went with it as a default.
Internal mics are not supported well under alsa, and in my experience can be very difficult to get functioning.
What would have helped, would have been for you to run the diagnostic script tsalsa or alsa-info.sh under openSUSE-10.3 when your mic worked, and then record that. And keep that !! Then we would have a functional baseline to compare against. Now, we have nothing.
Note, the tsalsa script is no longer supported (and its been removed from the troubleshooting guide). Hence I no longer recommend its use. The newer script is “alsa-info.sh” and it comes with 1.0.17 of alsa and on openSUSE-11.1 it can be run via:/usr/sbin/alsa-info.■■■■■ best to run it with root permissions twice. The first time to update the script, and the second time to have info on one’s hardware/software audio config pasted to the web so that the URL can be passed.
I noted you did not install alsa-firmware. Did you have that installed on 10.3? You could try installing that. Reboot afterward, go to your mixer, and try to config the mic.
Also, since you had this working under 10.3, … did you check then (when you were running 10.3) to see if it is an internal USB mic, as opposed to one integrated into the sound card. … often laptops will use a USB mic instead.
I hope you recorded some of this information when you had it functioning on 10.3, else you missed a “golden” opportunity to help us progress on 11.1.
oldcpu, in my notebook I have a partition with OpenSuSE 10.3 (which I am using now and will keep using up to the solution for this problem) and another one with OpenSuSE 11.1. So I can do any investigation requires.
Can I use the same “alsa-info.sh” that comes with 11.1 in 10.3? If not where can I get the 10.3 version for “alsa-info.sh”?
Ok, so if I understant this correctly, you have this script output for 11.1:
and you have this for 10.3:
I note alsa-1.0.14 (in openSUSE-10.3) identifies your hardware as a conexant CX5051, while 1.0.18 of alsa (in openSUSE-11.1) identifies it as a conexant CX20561 (Hermosa). I believe that is correct, as I believe the name of the CX5051 was changed to CX20561 (Hermosa).
I note both 10.3 and 11.1 apply position_fix=0, probe_mask=-1, single_cmd=N, and index=1. 11.1 applies bdl_pos_adj=32 but as near as I can determine 10.3 does not. I do not know why the difference, … possibly you could, for both 10.3 and 11.1, check the dmesg output immediately after booting. ie run:dmesg > dmesg.txt && curl -F file=@dmesg.txt nopaste.com/a and compare the two for sound/alsa info (ie compare 10.3 to 11.1). Are there warnings in one that are not in the other?
Also, reference your mixer I note 11.1 has more mixer controls. 11.1 has IEC958 ON (no 10.3 equivalent). For digital capture, 11.1 has it at 67% which is lower than 10.3’s 98%. For a good comparison, should you not put both at 98% ? I note 11.1 has the “mixer control” set to a “docking mic”. Can you change that? I note 11.1 has the external Mic ON at 80% capture and the internal Mic ON also, at 100% capture. Why do you have both 11.1 mics ON at the same time? Perhaps external should be OFF while you try to use Internal ?
I do not know why the difference in “bdl_pos_adj=32” between 11.1 and 10.3.
I made the corrections suggested (switched external mic to off) rerun the arecord / aplay and the situation was exactly the same as before “no sound from the speakers”
I rerun the script “alsa-info.sh” and uploaded the result to:
Note, those were observations as opposed to hard fast settings … ie how can you compare 10.3 to 11.1 if you do not try to make the settings similar ? … I know I am not able to do that sort of comparison if things are different …
Note I’m not a developer. I’m a user, like you.
If AFTER ensuring that you have applied similar settings, you still can not get 11.1 to match 10.3 behaviour, then what I DO SUGGEST is you write a bug report. Submitting Bug Reports - openSUSE
You could also try updating to 1.0.19 of alsa, and see if that helps, … but there are no guarantees. It may make things worse. There is guidance here for that. Note you must send 6 zypper commands. Alsa-update - openSUSE
Takashi Iwai solved the bug I raised (Bug # 480753 in bugzilla.novell.com) and now my internal mic is working. Below are some details on my alsa configuration:
If you look at the bug you will see the following message I left for Takashi:
==================
Takashi, Congratulations!!!
By folowing your directions I was able to get the internal mic and the external
mic to work.
One question: I did not install “nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-pae”. Therefore my screen is
not pleasant (seems a little blurred). When I ask Yast2 to install
“nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-pae” I get a message saying that
alsa-driver-kmp-pae-1.0.19.20090305_2.6.27.7_9.1-3.1.586 requires
kernel(pae:asound) but this requirement cannot be supplied. For the conflict
resolution it offers the following alternatives:
Ignore some of the alsa-driver-kmp-pae dependencies
I would like to install the nvidia video drivers. What do you suggest?
===================
You will notice that I removed OpenSuSE 11.1 x86-64 and installed OpenSuSE 11.1 i586. I did that as a last resource before receiving the suggestions from Takashi. As it working I am waiting for his answer to my question and then will reinstall the 64bit version of 11.1.
oldcpu, would you like some additional information from me?