Arch Linux

timofonic

Member

Registered: 2007-05-15

Posts: 47

Unable to make microphone to work on NVIDIA MCP55 onboard sound card

Hello.

Some time ago, I bought a nice HP xw9400 Workstation (with Dual Core AMD Opteron  2216) from Germany. Despite it's starting to become old by today's standards for some stuff like gaming, it's still quite okay to use and the SAS HDD makes it boot fastly. And it has one of the best cases, you can plug PCI/PCIe/PCI-X cards very easily and it's very nice to change or add HDDs. Maybe I'll upgrade the CPUs (I can upgrade the bios and it seems it can support better CPUs) if I find them on eBay or other place.

I have less problems with Arch than the rest of distributions, but I still have weird issues. Despite my computer hardware is somewhat old, I still experience weird problems everywhere (it seems I have some kind of weird "luck").

I have problems using my microphone under Arch with "NVIDIA Corporation MCP55 High Definition Audio (rev a2)" onboard sound card , here is the relevant info.

http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=5907a … f5d2b9d88c

$ ls -l /dev/snd
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root       60 Dec 12 00:00 by-id
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root       80 Dec 12 00:00 by-path
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  7 Dec 11 23:58 controlC0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  9 Dec 12 00:00 controlC1
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  6 Dec 11 23:58 hwC0D0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  5 Dec 12 01:34 pcmC0D0c
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  4 Dec 12 02:33 pcmC0D0p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  3 Dec 11 23:58 pcmC0D1p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  2 Dec 12 01:28 pcmC0D2c
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  8 Dec 12 01:43 pcmC1D0c
crw-rw----  1 root audio 116,  1 Dec 11 23:58 seq
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 33 Dec 11 23:58 timer

% arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC262 Analog [ALC262 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 2: ALC262 Alt Analog [ALC262 Alt Analog]
  Subdevices: 2/2
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
card 1: Camera [USB Video Camera], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

% arecord --list-pcms
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
default:CARD=NVidia
    HDA NVidia, ALC262 Analog
    Default Audio Device
sysdefault:CARD=NVidia
    HDA NVidia, ALC262 Analog
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC262 Analog
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC262 Analog
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC262 Analog
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC262 Analog
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC262 Analog
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC262 Analog
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
default:CARD=Camera
    USB Video Camera, USB Audio
    Default Audio Device
sysdefault:CARD=Camera
    USB Video Camera, USB Audio
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=Camera,DEV=0
    USB Video Camera, USB Audio
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=Camera,DEV=0
    USB Video Camera, USB Audio
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=Camera,DEV=0
    USB Video Camera, USB Audio
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=Camera,DEV=0
    USB Video Camera, USB Audio
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=Camera,DEV=0
    USB Video Camera, USB Audio
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=Camera,DEV=0
    USB Video Camera, USB Audio
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=Camera,DEV=0
    USB Video Camera, USB Audio
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output

(I was unable to make the microphone on the usb webcam to work, but that's another issue I'll ask in a separate forum thread...)

% head -n 1 /proc/asound/card0/codec*
Codec: Realtek ALC262

I found this in Gentoo forums, very similar issue and a fix that don't works (see in a bit further)
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-88 … art-0.html

And this...
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1672571
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1475588
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … bug/577178
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ubuntu … rking.html (2007 forum post, but very similar)
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-bugs … 02583.html (2009)
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=522101 (2009, closed in 2011)
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=474383
-> http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-bugs … 02583.html (it seems the bug tracker works quite bad or there's some issue looking at that issue, so here's the mailing list message about it)

I also tried create  /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf and add the following line to it...

options snd-hda-intel model=6stack

And no luck!  I tried it and still appear both "Rear Mic" and "Front Mic". I'll provide a screenshot later.

I'm starting to understand this, maybe it can help me...
http://alsa.opensrc.org/Record_from_mic

I tested both sound hardware by using arecord and audacity, no luck at all

% arecord -Dhw:1 --dump-hw-params
Recording WAVE 'stdin' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
HW Params of device "hw:1":
--------------------
ACCESS:  MMAP_INTERLEAVED RW_INTERLEAVED
FORMAT:  S16_LE
SUBFORMAT:  STD
SAMPLE_BITS: 16
FRAME_BITS: 16
CHANNELS: 1
RATE: [8000 48000]
PERIOD_TIME: [1000 32768000]
PERIOD_SIZE: [32 262144]
PERIOD_BYTES: [64 524288]
PERIODS: [2 1024]
BUFFER_TIME: (1333 65536000]
BUFFER_SIZE: [64 524288]
BUFFER_BYTES: [128 1048576]
TICK_TIME: ALL
--------------------
arecord: set_params:1233: Sample format non available
Available formats:
- S16_LE

% arecord -D hw:1 -f S16_LE myfile.raw
Recording WAVE 'myfile.raw' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
arecord: pcm_read:2031: read error: Input/output error

% arecord -D hw:1 -f S16_LE -V myfile.raw
Recording WAVE 'stdin' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
arecord: pcm_read:2031: read error: Input/output error

% arecord -D hw:1 -f S16_LE -V -r48000 myfile.raw
Recording WAVE 'myfile.raw' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
arecord: pcm_read:2031: read error: Input/output error

% arecord -D hw:1 -f S16_LE -r48000 myfile.raw
Recording WAVE 'myfile.raw' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 48000 Hz, Mono
arecord: pcm_read:2031: read error: Input/output error

% arecord -D hw:1 -f S16_LE -r44100 myfile.raw
Recording WAVE 'myfile.raw' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Mono
arecord: pcm_read:2031: read error: Input/output error

% arecord -D hw:1 -f S16_LE -r16000 myfile.raw
Recording WAVE 'myfile.raw' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 16000 Hz, Mono
arecord: pcm_read:2031: read error: Input/output error

(I tried them with my user and root, same results)

I had an Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro, but removed it to see if there was some problem. I'm still unable to use my Microphone even on onboard audio hardware. I'll try to use it once I have the microphone working

Regards.

Last edited by timofonic (2013-12-12 04:11:57)