Arch Linux

wizengamot

Member

Registered: 2025-07-30

Posts: 4

[MIcrophone] Laptop's Internal Mic Not Working

Hello everyone,

I'm having trouble getting my internal laptop microphone to work on a fresh Arch Linux installation with Hyprland. I'm using PipeWire as my audio server.

System Details:

    OS: Arch Linux (fully updated as of [Today's Date, e.g., 2025-07-31])

    DE/WM: Hyprland

    Audio Server: PipeWire 1.4.7 (with pipewire-pulse and wireplumber)

    Laptop Model: (Please insert your specific laptop model here, e.g., "ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14," "Lenovo IdeaPad 5," etc. - this is crucial for others to help!)

Problem Description:

My internal microphone is not picking up any sound. The input meters in pavucontrol show no activity.

Troubleshooting Steps Taken:

    Verified PipeWire setup:

        pactl info | grep "Server Name" confirms Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 1.4.7).

        Confirmed pipewire, wireplumber, pipewire-pulse, pipewire-alsa are installed.

        Confirmed PipeWire services (pipewire, pipewire-pulse, wireplumber) are user-enabled and started.

        (Did not remove pulseaudio as it was not found, indicating a clean PipeWire setup from the start).

        System rebooted after all changes.

    pavucontrol Checks:

        In "Input Devices" tab, I see three devices:

            Monitor of Raven/Raven2/Fenghuang HDMI/CP Audio Controller...

            Monitor of Family 17h/19h/1ah HD Audio Controller Pro

            Family 17h/19h/1ah HD Audio Controller Pro

        I've focused on Family 17h/19h/1ah HD Audio Controller Pro.

        All channels for this device are unmuted and at full volume.

        Crucially, when selecting this device, the "Port" dropdown only shows options related to the main audio output/input (e.g., "Analog Stereo Output/Input" or similar general options), but no specific "Internal Microphone" port option is listed.

        No input activity is shown on the meters for any of these devices.

    alsamixer Checks:

        Accessed alsamixer, selected the AMD HD Audio card.

        All "Capture" and "Mic" channels found are unmuted (00) and levels are maxed.

        No specific Input Source or Input Mux control explicitly listing "Internal Mic" was found that allowed switching.

    Audio Hardware Details (lspci -v | grep -A 7 -i "audio"):

    03:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Raven/Raven2/Fenghuang HDMI/DP Audio Controller
            Subsystem: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Raven/Raven2/Fenghuang HDMI/DP Audio Controller
            Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 64, IOMMU group 12
            Memory at fccc8000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
            Capabilities: <access denied>
            Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
            Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel

    03:00.2 Encryption controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 17h (Models 10h-1fh) Platform Security Processor
    --
    03:00.5 Multimedia controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Audio Coprocessor
            Subsystem: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Audio Coprocessor
            Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 63, IOMMU group 12
            Memory at fcc80000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
            Capabilities: <access denied>
            Kernel driver in use: snd_pci_acp3x
            Kernel modules: snd_pci_acp3x, snd_rn_pci_acp3x, snd_pci_acp5x, snd_pci_acp6x, snd_acp_pci, snd_rpl_pci_acp6x, snd_pci_ps, snd_sof_amd_renoir, snd_sof_amd_rembrandt, snd_sof_amd_vangogh, snd_sof_amd_acp63, snd_sof_amd_acp70

    03:00.6 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 17h/19h/1ah HD Audio Controller
            Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 15e2
            Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 65, IOMMU group 12
            Memory at fccc0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
            Capabilities: <access denied>
            Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
            Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel

    Recent Discovery from journalctl:
    After checking journalctl --user -u wireplumber, I found the following relevant entries:

    Jul 30 21:31:11 pranjal wireplumber[1226]: wp-device: SPA handle 'api.libcamera.enum.manager' could not be loaded; is it installed?
    Jul 30 21:31:11 pranjal wireplumber[1226]: s-monitors-libcamera: PipeWire's libcamera SPA pl [truncated]

    This suggests an issue with libcamera integration.

Current Suspected Cause and Next Steps (based on journalctl):

It appears WirePlumber is failing to load the libcamera SPA plugin. While my primary issue is the microphone, given the logs, it's possible the internal microphone's detection or routing is tied to the libcamera stack on this AMD platform.

My next step will be to try installing pipewire-plugin-libcamera (or an equivalent package if the name differs) and then restarting the PipeWire services.

Request for Help:

Has anyone experienced similar issues with AMD audio and internal microphones, especially with libcamera errors in the wireplumber logs? Are there any specific snd-hda-intel or snd-pci-acp3x kernel module options that are commonly needed for AMD/ASUS laptops to ensure proper microphone detection?

Any guidance or further troubleshooting suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

xs1423

Guest

Re: [MIcrophone] Laptop's Internal Mic Not Working

Did you try to test your laptop's internal microphone on a DE? I've observed sometimes that a WM is too bare bones and I've to usually install necessary dependencies to get something to work. DEs generally include most of the things I need, especially GNOME and KDE. They provide a very polished and complete OOTB experience even on Arch.

Secondly, does your laptop have a Realtek microphone card? I've two Lenovo laptops with Realtek microphone cards and they don't work at all on Ubuntu and Debian (no sound at all) but works on Arch with some weird audio problems and works perfectly on Windows.

By the way, did you copy and paste your question with some AI tool? I am asking this because today's date part and laptop model under system detail section looks like generative content, Lol.

Lastly, My apologies if I didn't read your post correctly and asked wrong questions. I am also a newbie in Arch and tried my best to help. Also ignore my grammatical mistakes (if any) as I am not a native English speaker.

Peace

wizengamot

Member

Registered: 2025-07-30

Posts: 4

Re: [MIcrophone] Laptop's Internal Mic Not Working

Hello yes I did try my internal microphone on GNOME, the microphone works perfectly, but I won't switch to a DE in any case

I copy and pasted the output using tmux's yank plugin, so maybe that answers your question.

And no problem, after all it is also a mistake on my part that I posted such a huge and cluttered message.

Thank you for replying.

Is there anyway to fix this??? Because my bluetooth device microphones work fine, and I update the xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland, and installed the wlroots and gdk ones as well, but it still won't fix the issue.