ThinkPad microphone not working

[stan]

On Sun, 15 Apr 2012 17:34:48 +0200
suvayu ali <fatkasuvayu+linux at gmail.com> wrote:

> Apologies for the delayed follow-up. I got side-tracked with a
> deadline.

Not an issue.

> On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 20:59, stan <gryt2 at q.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, 14 Apr 2012 18:30:37 +0200
> > suvayu ali <fatkasuvayu+linux at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have alsa-utils installed and I found about the state file before I
> saw your post. The F15 Live USB doesn't have one so I removed it from
> F16 and rebooted but that didn't help.

It just saves the state of your system at shutdown, or manually if you
use alsactl.

> I had a weird crash with amixer at first, but after rebooting it was
> gone.
> 
> Output from amixer when it crashed:
> 
> ALSA lib pulse.c:243:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect:
> Connection refused
> amixer: Mixer attach default error: Connection refused

Don't know what this is - contention for the device?

> 
> Output from amixer on F16 (after the reboot):
> 
> Simple mixer control 'Master',0
>   Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined penum
>   Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
>   Limits: Playback 0 - 65536
>   Mono:
>   Front Left: Playback 30419 [46%] [on]
>   Front Right: Playback 30419 [46%] [on]
> Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
>   Capabilities: cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined penum
>   Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
>   Limits: Capture 0 - 65536
>   Front Left: Capture 65534 [100%] [on]
>   Front Right: Capture 65534 [100%] [on]
> 
> Output from amixer on F15 Live USB:
> 
> Simple mixer control 'Master',0
>   Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined penum
>   Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
>   Limits: Playback 0 - 65536
>   Mono:
>   Front Left: Playback 30419 [46%] [on]
>   Front Right: Playback 30419 [46%] [on]
> Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
>   Capabilities: cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined penum
>   Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
>   Limits: Capture 0 - 65536
>   Front Left: Capture 65536 [100%] [on]
>   Front Right: Capture 65536 [100%] [on]
> 
> The only difference is in the last two lines. I'm not sure how to
> interpret this difference. Is it important that the non-working setup
> has numbers smaller than the Limits line?

This isn't material.  They are both indicating high capture volume

> The output of alsa-info is a bit large so I have put them on pastebin.

Good idea.
 
> F15 Live USB: <http://pastebin.com/VkA33cD8>
> F16: <http://pastebin.com/TZm4XS4d>

I saved the files and ran a diff.  There are *major* differences for
your device from F15 to F17!  And in the environment.

The settings difference I noticed at the time you captured these, and
that might have an effect on your situation, F15 <, F16 >

> Simple mixer control 'Internal Mic',0
543,548c596,604
<   Front Left: Capture 80 [100%] [6.00dB] [on]
<   Front Right: Capture 80 [100%] [6.00dB] [on]
< Simple mixer control 'Analog Mic Boost',0
<   Capabilities: cenum
<   Items: '0dB' '10dB' '20dB' '30dB' '40dB'
<   Item0: '20dB'
---
>   Front Left: Capture 0 [0%] [-74.00dB] [off]  <-- mic turned off?
>   Front Right: Capture 0 [0%] [-74.00dB] [off]
> Simple mixer control 'Internal Mic Boost',0
>   Capabilities: volume penum
>   Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
>   Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
>   Limits: 0 - 4
>   Front Left: 3 [75%] [36.00dB]
>   Front Right: 3 [75%] [36.00dB]


> I did observe something strange though. When I use arecord,
> pavucontrol shows me that something is wanting to record. But the
> meter doesn't show any signal (as in no fluctuating bar). So maybe
> its listening to the wrong device? I think this was one of your
> original suggestions on "things to check". I thought I checked that,
> but maybe I was wrong. Could you be a more explicit about how I could
> eliminate this possibility?

Yeah, do an
alsamixer -c0
Then hit F4 to go to the record tab.
On the left should be a bunch of input selections.  Be sure that you
have mic selected as your input device.  It seems to be turned off
above in F16, though not in F15.

If nothing else seems to work, you could try a reinstall of alsa-lib,
and then a reinstall of pulseaudio;  this might allow them to
reconfigure properly for your hardware.  You might have to do some
tweaking to get things set the way you like after this as it will
probably wipe existing setup.