ThinkPad microphone not working

[suvayu ali]

Hi Stan,

Thanks for your helpful comments.

On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 18:33, stan <gryt2 at q.com> wrote:
> Did anything change around the time the mic stopped working?
>

I think I inadvertently dropped my backpack to the floor (from about 15
cm) with the ThinkPad inside along with a few books and some clothes. I
can't tell exactly when it stopped working since I didn't need the mic
for about a week. I had been successfully using the mic before.

> I don't think this is an alsa issue.  If alsamixer sees the mic, then
> alsa is handling it properly, if the driver and hardware are OK.
>
> Install pavucontrol and check how pulse is viewing the microphone.
> Perhaps it inadvertently got turned off?
>

Everything seems to be in order. Just for the sake of completeness I'm
posting screenshots from both alsamixer and pavucontrol. Alsamixer was
started like this:

$ alsamixer -c0 -Vcapture

> Look for permission conflicts, including SELinux, in the logs, when you
> try to use the mic.
>

I looked in /var/log/messages. I see no suspicious messages. But I do
see the following:

pulseaudio[1455]: module-alsa-card.c: Failed to find a working profile.
pulseaudio[1455]: module.c: Failed to load  module "module-alsa-card"
(argument: "device_id="29" name="platform-thinkpad_acpi"
card_name="alsa_card.platform-thinkpad_acpi" tsched=yes ignore_dB=no
card_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1""): initialization
failed.

Although I don't understand the error, I don't think this is related to
my problem as I see this is also present in old log files (from the time
when the mic worked).

> Try using arecord to record directly from alsa into a wav.
> arecord -d 10 -f cd -t wav foobar.wav
> If the default device doesn't work, you can try
> arecord -d 10 -f cd -t wav -D plughw:0 foobar.wav
> or
> arecord -d 10 -f cd -t wav -D plughw:1 foobar.wav
>
> If none of these work, I would suspect hardware failure.

None of these worked and I also looked at the alsa-devel thread you
referenced; I don't think that my issue is similar.

I guess that means this is hardware failure. Hopefully I won't have
problems with warranty since I bought this in Canada, and now I am in
Switzerland. :-|

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.