Internal Microphone Not Working [SOLVED]

faustism · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2011 Posts: 35 Location: Cornell

I'm installing Gentoo on my new ASUS K53E laptop, and I've gotten much of the basics working but I'm hung up on getting the internal microphone to work.

It is a Realtek ALC269VB sound card using kernel module snd_hda_intel from kernel version 2.6.38. The rest of the sound works fine. I have tried putting "option snd_hda_intel enable_msi=1" and "option snd_hda_intel model=laptop-amic" in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf (at separate times) and neither seemed to fix the problem.

Any ideas on where to go from here?

Thanks

-Derek Faust

PS. I'm new here :-)

and I really love Gentoo so far.

BradN · Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 8:48 pm Post subject:

Try out alsamixer and see if there is any mic source selection in there that makes it work. Sometimes other options interact as well (mic boost comes to mind, even number of output channels on some setups), so experiment thoroughly.

faustism · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2011 Posts: 35 Location: Cornell

where do i find other options? when i run alsamixer all I see are the levels (and i adjusted all of them to approximately the middle) but i get nothing.

aCOSwt · Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 10:11 pm Post subject:

1/ How do you know your microphone is not functional ? (Which applications did you try ?)
2/ Do not hesistate to push all your cursors to the max. There is no risk for distorsion as these cursors act on attenuators. Not amplifiers.
3/ Do you get an asound.conf or .asoundrc ? If yes, post its content.

BradN · Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 10:35 pm Post subject:

There may be more sliders/settings to the right in alsamixer, keep hitting right arrow and it might scroll over.

faustism · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2011 Posts: 35 Location: Cornell

I have tried arecord skype and the google voice search in chromium.

I just tried pushing them all to the max. nothing still.

I have no /etc/asound.conf or ~/.asoundrc, maybe i need one?

Yes, I got all of the sliders.

BradN · Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 1:11 am Post subject:

Are you sure the channels involved aren't muted? If it says MM at the bottom, it's muted and you have to hit M to unmute. Sorry for asking the obvious but on most setups the mic input really does work... If it really isn't having any of it, you might be best off filing a bug report.

aCOSwt · Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 8:46 am Post subject:

1/ As part of your skype's audio settings, which device did you select as input ? Did you have other choices ?
2/ could you post the output of

DirtyHairy · Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 2:39 pm Post subject:

Probably stating the obvious, but: per default, alsamixer uses a grouped view, putting all playback settings into one window, and all recording settings into another one. You can cycle between those and a third, unified view using tab. If that's not helpful: does an external mic work?

BradN · Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 4:41 pm Post subject:

Just thought of something else... is there a webcam in the same spot as the microphone? If so, the mic might actually be handled by the webcam.

faustism · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2011 Posts: 35 Location: Cornell

none of the channels were muted. and i did see all 3 tabs of sliders.

I cannot select any other devices in alsamixer unless i type them in manually.

DirtyHairy · Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 9:59 pm Post subject:

Sorry, I'm clueless as well. You can, however, fire up some other distros live CD and check whether it works there. Hopefully, it does, and you can check for differences in the setup.

aCOSwt · Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 6:31 am Post subject:

From the reading of http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git-commits-head/2010/3/1/25182
I deduce that your sound card get TWO analog inputs. One for an external mic, the other one from the built-in.
These inputs seem to be both directed to a built-in hardware MIXER (and not MULTIPLEXER).
Maybe the control you get under alsamixer just shows as input a single control being actually the output of the mixer.
=> There must be a way to control / mute the inputs of this mixer from somewhere.
Could be an additional software. For example, with my M-AUDIO-DELTA, I need a software from media-sound/alsa-tools to take contro lover the built-in hardware mixer.
Maybe you could check for this.

faustism · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2011 Posts: 35 Location: Cornell

I tried using another distro's (Linux Mint 11) LiveCD and he microphone worked fine. In gnome-volume-control i was given an option to switch between an internal and external microphones. Can this preference be set somewhere without the gnome-volume-control program? I ran it in debug mode and switched the setting, and the output was as follows:

faustism · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2011 Posts: 35 Location: Cornell

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/pavFaq08RfQIyOusEnkrUg?feat=directlink

Above is a link to a screenshot of alsamixer in Linux Mint, when the microphone worked. In Gentoo it doesn't have the "L R" and "Capture" in red over the first slider, its just a white line. Also in Gentoo, there's an extra slider called "Digital" to the right of the "Capture1" slider.

faustism · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2011 Posts: 35 Location: Cornell

it works! I searched on how to load that parameter and found http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1719808.html
and i tried

faustism · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2011 Posts: 35 Location: Cornell

I ran the alsa-info script to get some extra information. does this help?

faustism · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2011 Posts: 35 Location: Cornell

Problem Solved. I didn't realize that input could be turned off and on via the spacebar in alsamixer. I assumed they could only be muted or unmuted with "m" like the other channels. Sorry for the inconvenience to all.

BradN · Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2011 12:28 am Post subject:

Oh, I didn't even know about/remember that part... then again all the recording I do in linux is via a dedicated USB box that drives XLR mics, so it has no extra configuration like that.