2

Recently, external microphone has stopped working while using classic wired audio combo jack headset.

And worse, I've tried now fresh Ubuntu 20.10 USB live, and not working, either.

Basics:

  1. Headset's microphone works fine both in MS Windows on the same machine and on older Xubuntu on another machine.
  2. Internal laptop mic works normally.
  3. Yes, I have mic unmuted in settings.

Strange observations:

  1. there is only one profile in pavucontrol: pavucontrol only one profile whereas on my older machine with Xubuntu there are many more and I had been used to switch between "Analog Stereo Duplex" and "Analog Stereo output" to actually mute all mics in a convenient way.

  2. There is no [on] or [off] in amixer by the external microphone:

$ amixer -c 0 | grep -iA6 mic
Simple mixer control 'Dmic0',0
  Capabilities: cvolume cswitch
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Capture 0 - 70
  Front Left: Capture 63 [90%] [13.00dB] [off]
  Front Right: Capture 63 [90%] [13.00dB] [off]
Simple mixer control 'Dmic1 2nd',0
  Capabilities: cvolume
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Capture 0 - 70
  Front Left: Capture 65 [93%] [15.00dB]
  Front Right: Capture 65 [93%] [15.00dB]
Simple mixer control 'PGA1.0 1 Master',0

-- these [[on|off]] change properly on un/muting in the internal's mic Sound settings: un/muting in sound settings unmuting2

What does not work: This recommendation (killall pulseaudio && pulseaudio -k && rm -r ~/.config/pulse/* ; rm -r ~/.pulse* ; sleep 10 && reboot) from help.ubuntu.com has not helped.

Hardware and OS info:

$ lspci | grep -i audio
00:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation Smart Sound Technology Audio Controller (rev 30)
$ sudo lshw | grep -C6 "00:1f.3"
             configuration: latency=0
        *-multimedia
             description: Multimedia audio controller
             product: Smart Sound Technology Audio Controller
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1f.3
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.3
             version: 30
             width: 64 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pm msi bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=sof-audio-pci latency=32
             resources: irq:186 memory:9c4b4000-9c4b7fff memory:9c200000-9c2fffff
$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 20.10
Release:    20.10
Codename:   groovy
$ uname -oipmvr
5.8.0-34-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Thu Dec 10 18:01:14 UTC 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ cat /proc/asound/card*/codec* | grep Codec
Codec: Realtek ALC295
Codec: Intel Icelake HDMI

How to fix this?

I believe the very same headset used to work just fine in 20.04. What to do, please?

crysman
  • 538

2 Answers2

0

For my SPIN 5 (SP513-52N) it was enough to combine this and this. So I put the following into /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf:

options snd-hda-intel model=alc255-acer

This works although the Spin 5 uses an ALC295 (and not ALC255). Now when I plug something into the audio jack I get asked, if it is 'Headphones' or 'Headset'.

guest
  • 1
0

For my Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-55-797J) with the same codec as yours, I specified this configuration in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf:

options snd-hda-intel model=alc255-acer,dell-headset-multi

It worked.

Konstantin
  • 1