No front mic boost channels (and no decent audio input as consequence)

[Rui Carmo]

2.6.27-8-eeepc and -lean on 8.10 both lack the "Front Mic" and "Front Mic Boost" channels in the mixer, which were present on the kernel shipped with Ubuntu-Eee 8.04.1

As a result, it is impossible to use the Eee with Skype or Sound Recorder.

This may also be tied to #294111, but it bears highlighting as a serious impediment to using audio input.

[Mark Rowan (mark-tamias)]

I have this problem too.

It's not technically impossible to use the front mic -- the stereo microphones at the bottom of the screen on the Eee PC 901 are supposed to allow directional recording and noise cancellation, which indeed they do. However, some setting somewhere in the sound driver appears to be inverted, such that the mic picks up sound very clearly on either side of the Eee, and nothing at all from directly in front.

E.g. if I sit and talk to the Eee facing it directly, my voice is not captured (or rather, it is cancelled out by the stereo mic). As I move left and right, to about 45 degrees either side of straight-ahead, my voice becomes clear and is recorded perfectly well.

Searching various forums has thrown up a few terms such as beam forming and echo cancellation, which apparently should be disabled to get the mic input to work correctly. One example is here: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?pid=406503 but it relies on Realtek HD Sound Effect Manager on Windows XP. However, due to the problem described in the main bug report, the various additional controls are all missing.