Headphones don't work for aluminum iMac

[Jeff Mings]

Hello!
    For the most part, the Jaunty beta is working very nicely on my intel iMac. This aluminum 20" imac reports 7,1 using dmidecode. Under 8.04 and 8.1 as well, I have been able to hear lower quality sounds through the built-in speakers using either of these additions to alsa-base.conf:

options snd-hda-intel model=mbp3
or
options snd-hda-intel model=imac24.

Unfortunately, the sound quality seems impaired, and I haven't been able to get the headphones to work at all. Using the default alsa-base.conf gives very low amplitude headphone output that requires a lot of amplification to hear; no internal speaker output is heard with the default.

    Here's the output from aplay -l:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC885 Analog [ALC885 Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC885 Digital [ALC885 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

    cat /proc/asound/cards:

 0 [Intel ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel
                      HDA Intel at 0x90700000 irq 20

I have also attached the output from dmidecode.

Please let me know if I can furnish any other information or assist in the resolution of this sound problem.

Aloha,
-Jeff Mings

[Jeff Mings (jeffmings)]

Addition:
I have used alsamixer, which is another great old-school terminal app :), to ensure that all relevant channels are turned up and not muted. I've looked through a lot of postings and tried many different possibilities on Heron, Ibix and Jaunty Jackalope beta.

[Russ Brown (macmanui)]

I was having the same problems and the information here definitely improved things - so maybe it'll help things along here too:

https://bugtrack.alsa-project.org/alsa-bug/view.php?id=4086

[Jeff Mings (jeffmings)]

Thanks Russ!

    Using this magical option in alsa-base.conf proved to be the fix:
model=asus-a7m

    I found this by following Russ's link. I didn't need to re-compile Alsa! I simply needed to add the lines:

# iMac option
options snd-hda-intel model=asus-a7m

to alsa-base.conf in /etc/modprobe.d

and run alsamixer and turn on all of the devices.
Additionally, the internal microphone works quite nicely! The iMac has a line-in rather than a standard mike jack, so I haven't tested that, but I expect that we can consider this closed nonetheless.

Aloha,

-Jeff Mings

[Jeff Mings (jeffmings)]

Hmmm....

    Unfortunately, after booting into the Mac OSX partition and running some updates, the headphone jack no longer works. At least I still have good sound from the internal speakers. After trying unsuccessfully to use the headphone jack, I tried my Logitech USB headphones. After selecting/enabling the relevant settings, they work and sound very good. Using a USB sound device may be the simplest thing to do for now.

Aloha,

-Jeff Mings

[Nicolas Jungers (unbug)]

I'm on karmic with the /etc/modprobe.d/option: options snd-hda-intel model=imac24
on an iMac 24" alu, model 2008 and the jack output doesn't work and doesn't even appears as available option.

uname -a
Linux i24 2.6.31-15-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Tue Nov 10 14:53:52 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux

aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC889A Analog [ALC889A Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC889A Digital [ALC889A Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

hwinfo --sound
13: PCI 1b.0: 0403 Audio device
  [Created at pci.318]
  UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_8086_284b
  Unique ID: u1Nb.2frKzjmhZt4
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:00:1b.0
  Hardware Class: sound
  Model: "Intel 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller"
  Vendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
  Device: pci 0x284b "82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller"
  SubVendor: pci 0x106b "Apple Computer Inc."
  SubDevice: pci 0x00a0
  Revision: 0x03
  Driver: "HDA Intel"
  Driver Modules: "snd_hda_intel"
  Memory Range: 0xd0700000-0xd0703fff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  IRQ: 20 (8004 events)
  Module Alias: "pci:v00008086d0000284Bsv0000106Bsd000000A0bc04sc03i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: snd_hda_intel is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe snd_hda_intel"
  Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown

lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Fam...