no Mic need help

English Hardware
1

I can play music (meaning my speakers are working). I can turn up the mic and can’t record anything. If I turn up the analog Mix I can hear myself talking in the speakers. But still can’t record with (arecord -d 5 test.wav). At first I thought it had something to with the capture because several times I have been able to get it to work by playing with the capture controls. But everytime I reboot I loose the mic and the capture setting are the same as when it worked. At this point I have been fighting this for two days. I really need this for skype.

Below is the output from tsalsa which I hope will tell somebody something.

tsalsa.txt - nopaste.com (beta)

2

tsalsa.txt - nopaste.com (beta)

3

I think may have something to do with permissions. I just keep playing with alsamixer and suddenly the mic will start working. BTW I’m using 11.0 KDE3.5 if that makes a difference.

4

Hi jfabiani,

I had a similar problem earlier in the year, and it turned out that it was fixable within just a few mouse clicks… Now I am not saying that this is specifically what is wrong with yours, but this may be something to try before going about re-configuring things.

Here is a detailed description of how I got my microphone working, so that hopefully if you aresuffering from the same issue, you will be able to fix yours in 30 seconds flat!

Step one. Click the little speaker in the task bar next to the digital clock. (The volume controller(Kmix))

Step two. Click the “Mixer” button.

Step three. Click “Settings” at the top and select “Configure Channels”.

Step four. Now mark all the check boxes that have anything to do with mic, both internal and external… Also select the one for “Capture”. Click “Ok”.

Step five. Enable capture as well as Mic Capture, and put their volume to about 75% to test… Put “Mic Boost” to about 25% initially. You may need to select the correct microphone and would now need to do multiple tests to get your mic levels correct. If your levels are not correct you will get a whole lot of distortion due to the mic and mic boost levels being to high… Each user would have different settings here I suspect due to the different hardware configs, so play around with it till you get it right.

Step six. Test. As opdcpu suggested, open a terminal window and do the following test.

arecord -d 10 myrecording.wav

Look further up in this post for a description on arecord…

Once you press enter, it will start recording for 10 seconds, so just speak normally into your microphone till the prompt reappears.

Now that you have made a recording, listen to it so that you can make sure that you can hear yourself. To do this, I opened my “home directory” using Dolphin and double clicked the “myrecording.wav” file to playback the recording. If you can’t hear yourself, go back into KMix, and select the other microphone (If you have one) and play with the volume levels to see if you can get it right… Select and deselect the “Capture” option, but be sure to re-run the recording test after each change you make to ensure that you don’t miss it working.

Done.

I know I went overboard with the instructions, but I hope that someone skimming over it will benefit from them.

Dredger.

5

Dredger thanks for the reply. I have in fact played with the capture many times. But it is still not working. I’m using both arecord and audacity to check if the mic is working correctly. I do know that it is sort of working when I set the capture to the highest level (along with mic boost). I know because the mice the input meter in audacity reflects that levels as I speak into the mic. And just sometimes the mic just starts working (from me playing with the kmixer settings). But when I reboot whatever caused it to work is no longer there.

I believe this a setting in the config files. My motherboard uses an Intel HDA OCH10 which I don’t see on the list of supported sound cards.

I have been running a program get_alsa_analyzler.py. And everytime it shows the mic as mute = true. But I don’t know how to un-mute the mic. Everything I do in kmix, or alsamixer does not change the output from python analyzler I’m running.

So I’m at a complete lost.

6

tsalsa is no longer supported. The developer of it now supports the alsa-info.sh script, which as of 1.0.17 of alsa is now included with alsa.

Please, can you provide the output URL from running the alsa-info.sh script? You can run that script by copying and pasting (with your PC connected to the internet):

wget -O alsa-info.sh http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh && bash alsa-info.sh

Be certain you have your mixer setup EXACTLY how you believe it should be for your mic to function.

Please also provide the output of:

rpm -qa | grep alsa
rpm -qa | grep pulse
rpm -q libasound2
uname -a
cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound

If your mixer has been set up correctly, then its possible you may need to update your alsa version, but first lets look at what the above provides.

7

I have done as requested.

Your ALSA information is located at http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=9e2b670ce20a0bc43b8c5f9448afd95a26fbb965

Please inform the person helping you.

johnf@linux-v0t5:~>
johnf@linux-v0t5:~> rpm -qa | grep alsa
alsa-utils-1.0.16-35.1
tsalsa-20080914-0.pm.1
alsa-driver-unstable-kmp-pae-1.0.20.20090709_2.6.25.20_0.4-3.1
alsa-plugins-1.0.16-57.1
alsa-oss-1.0.15-48.1
alsa-1.0.20-22.1
alsa-driver-kmp-pae-1.0.20.20090709_2.6.25.20_0.4-2.1
johnf@linux-v0t5:~> rpm -qa | grep pulse
johnf@linux-v0t5:~> rpm -q libasound2
libasound2-1.0.16-39.1
johnf@linux-v0t5:~> uname -a
Linux linux-v0t5 2.6.25.20-0.4-pae #1 SMP 2009-06-01 09:57:12 +0200 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
johnf@linux-v0t5:~> cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel

8

You should NOT have both the unstable and nominal alsa-driver-kmp-pae installed at the same time. So REMOVE the alsa-driver-unstable-kmp-pae-1.0.20.20090709_2.6.25.20_0.4-3.1
and then to be certain nothing else was removed inadvertently, reinstall your alsa-driver-kmp-pae (ensuring you also update your other alsa apps to be consistent). Restart your PC to reload the modules and test.

9

removed everything and did my best to match versions of alsa (used openSUSE Build Sevice for 11.1). After reboot the capture is always at it’s lowest setting. Still no mic.

Your ALSA information is located at http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=ffc50edb992f039c989519b470ebc1f20a59237f

Please inform the person helping you.

johnf@linux-v0t5:~> rpm -qa | grep alsa
alsa-1.0.20-30.1
alsa-utils-1.0.20.git20090620-1.8
alsa-driver-kmp-pae-1.0.20.20090711_2.6.25.20_0.4-1.1
johnf@linux-v0t5:~> rpm -qa | grep pulse
johnf@linux-v0t5:~> rpm -q libasound2
libasound2-1.0.20-30.1
johnf@linux-v0t5:~> uname -a
Linux linux-v0t5 2.6.25.20-0.4-pae #1 SMP 2009-06-01 09:57:12 +0200 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
johnf@linux-v0t5:~> cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel

10

Frankly, I do not know enough about alsa to know how well it will function with such a minimal install of alsa. If it were me I would also have installed alsa-firmware, alsa-oss, alsa-tools and possibly alsa-plugins.

Also, some questions on your mixer:

!!-------Mixer controls for card 0 [Intel]

Card hw:0 ‘Intel’/‘HDA Intel at 0xf7ff8000 irq 22’
Mixer name : ‘Analog Devices AD1989B’
Simple mixer control ‘Front Mic’,0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
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 ‘Input Source’,0
Items: ‘Mic’ ‘Front Mic’ ‘Line’ ‘Front Line’ ‘CD’ ‘Aux’ ‘Mix’
Item0: ‘Mic’
Simple mixer control ‘Input Source’,1
Items: ‘Mic’ ‘Front Mic’ ‘Line’ ‘Front Line’ ‘CD’ ‘Aux’ ‘Mix’
Item0: ‘Mic’
Since I can not see your hardware, I can not tell what the difference is between the mic and front mic.

What test are you continuing to use for this?

I recommend a simple test like:
arecord -d 10 myrecording.wav where “-d 10” specifies a 10 second recording.

Have you tried to manually tune your AD1989B in your /etc/modprobe.d/sound file (in case it was not properly identified and configured during boot) ? I note this from the HD-Audio-Models.txt file for 1.0.20 of alsa:

AD1988/AD1988B/AD1989A/AD1989B
==============================
  6stack	6-jack
  6stack-dig	ditto with SPDIF
  3stack	3-jack
  3stack-dig	ditto with SPDIF
  laptop	3-jack with hp-jack automute
  laptop-dig	ditto with SPDIF
  auto

For example, from that list, to test with "6stack" you could change the /etc/modprobe.d/sound file to:

options snd-hda-intel model=6stack
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel

restart your pc, and then test your mic.

If “6stack” does not work, you could try each of the other times in the list, one at a time, in a similar fashion to “6stack”. Ie to try “3stack” , one would change the /etc/modprobe.d/sound file to

options snd-hda-intel model=3stack
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel

Try each option from the list.