Mic not working in Ubuntu 8.10 Laptop with Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family)

[donatello]

I have attached the output of "lspci -vv". My microphone does not work right from hardy heron to intrepid, even though I am now using the latest kernel (updated on Nov 3 2008) on Intrepid Ibex:

aditya@donatello:~/misc/soundtest$ uname -r
2.6.27-7-generic

gnome-sound-recorder just freezes after I click "Stop Recording", and the record does not work giving the following output:

aditya@donatello:~/misc/soundtest$ arecord -vv -fdat foo.wav
Recording WAVE 'foo.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 48000 Hz, Stereo
ALSA <-> PulseAudio PCM I/O Plugin
Its setup is:
  stream : CAPTURE
  access : RW_INTERLEAVED
  format : S16_LE
  subformat : STD
  channels : 2
  rate : 48000
  exact rate : 48000 (48000/1)
  msbits : 16
  buffer_size : 24000
  period_size : 6000
  period_time : 125000
  tstamp_mode : NONE
  period_step : 1
  avail_min : 6000
  period_event : 0
  start_threshold : 1
  stop_threshold : 24000
  silence_threshold: 0
  silence_size : 0
  boundary : 6755399441055744000
arecord: pcm_read:1473: read error: Input/output error

Here is the output of amixer (before I performed the previous test):

aditya@donatello:~/misc/soundtest$ amixer
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 65536
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 62914 [96%] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 62914 [96%] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
  Capabilities: cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Capture 0 - 65536
  Front Left: Capture 65536 [100%] [on]
  Front Right: Capture 65536 [100%] [on]

And version of alsa is:

aditya@donatello:~/misc/soundtest$ alsactl --version
alsactl version 1.0.17

So I guess this means that this audio card is not supported by Alsa? The thing is that the mic has worked on Suse Linux enterprise, which I uninstalled!

There are lots of bug reports mentioning mic not working in many laptops; I'd like to help get it working, so please let me know if there is any additional information I can provide.

[donatello (aditya.mmy)]

The output of www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh is present at http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=01458e637584d1acc6b8135660396d2ea0645d1e

[jimme (jimreevesdavid)]

I also have the same problems. I even have the same sound card:

<snip from output of lspci>
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)

And I have the same kernel too 2.6.27-7-generic on 32 bit Intrepid ibex.
My gnome-sound-recorder also freezes on trying to record after clicking stop.

[Matthew Woerly (nattgew)]

Here's my card:
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
It worked fine in Hardy, but the mic port refuses to work in Intrepid. I usually play the mic sound through my speakers. The onboard mic works, but the mic port does not. I also get some static from the headphone port that didn't happen before.

[Marcelo R. Minholi (minholi)]

I'm having the same problem on other laptops and desktop computers. I think this problem can be occuring independent of computer model or architecture. Softwares like xvidcap, istanbul and gtk-recordMyDesktop cannot record sound and hangs up when I try.

[Vladimir Yakovlev (nagos)]

Same problem on Asus EeePC.
arecord input/output error

/etc/init.d/gdm stop
arecord works fine.

On desktop PC (Creative Audigy SE) no erors.
I suggest problem in pulse audio,blocking audiocard.

[Vladimir Yakovlev (nagos)]

'killall pulseaudio' make arecord works

[donatello (aditya.mmy)]

Yes, pulseaudio does seem to be the problem. I managed to fix it by a coincidence.

The following link is to a bug report about the erratic time elapsed shown by gnome-sound-recorder:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-media/+bug/282316

There is a fix there in Daniel Chen's PPA. When I added the PPA (https://launchpad.net/~crimsun/+archive), it upgraded pulseaudio as well as alsa-plugins, and my problems were fixed. It was a combination of a fix in libasound2 (which fixed gnome-sound-recorder) and pulseaudio which fixed my recording problem.

I am not sure if this should be marked as a duplicate of 282316, because the problem also includes pulseaudio but the fix is out there in Chen's PPA.

[Matthew Woerly (nattgew)]

I tried the killall, but mic playthrough will still not work. I'll try the PPA.

[Matthew Woerly (nattgew)]

Still no go.

[Daniel Coelho (danielcoelho)]

Do the 'sudo killall pulseaudio', then open the gnome-volume-control and turn all the controls on.
Go to the switches panel and check ONLY the 'IEC958 Default PCM' (It really works).

[Daniel Coelho (danielcoelho)]

I forgot:
after kill, remove pulseaudio: sudo apt-get remove --purge pulseaudio

[Matthew Woerly (nattgew)]

I think adding
options snd-hda-intel model=3stack
to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base fixed this for me.
I have an installation that I upgraded to Jaunty that's been weird with audio... I might play around with that one.

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug was filed against a series that is no longer supported and so is being marked as Won't Fix. If this issue still exists in a supported series, please file a new bug.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.