[Gutsy] AD198x Analog: microphone misconfigured

[Pavel Rojtberg]

hardware: hp nx6325
driver: snd-hda-intel
chipset: AD198x Analog

if gstreamer-properties uses alsa default(alsasrc) there is no input at all.
if I specify the device(alsasrc device="hw:0,0"), I can hear the the input, but gstreamer-properties says:

"Failed to construct test pipeline for 'ALSA - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture'"

if I try the same in gnome-audio-properties I get:
"Failed to construct test pipeline for 'gconfaudiosrc ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink profile=chat'"

launching that pipeline using gst-launch results in:
 LC_ALL=C gst-launch gconfaudiosrc ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink profile=chat
Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Pipeline is live and does not need PREROLL ...
Setting pipeline to PLAYING ...
New clock: GstAudioSrcClock

and I can hear the input.

skype works after forcing the device. however all gstreamer based apps fail.

[Omegamormegil (omegamormegil)]

Thanks for saying how you got capture working with gst-launch - this will help me get Skype working. This bug sounds like it's related to #131711. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gstreamer/+bug/131711

[Madmoose (desaad)]

Both my computers are getting:

Failed to construct test pipeline for 'gconfaudiosrc ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink profile=chat'

I have no sound at all.

[MartinR (martinrandau)]

I have a zepto znote 3415 with the same sound card. I only got sound working through a long workaround, but capture still does not work. I get the error message when testing sound input.

Doing "gst-launch gconfaudiosrc ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink profile=chat" in a terminal shows the same messages but I can't hear any input.

[graylion (graylion)]

NVidia CK804 here and exactly the same problem

[Simos Xenitellis  (simosx)]

Audio works on my system (hda-intel, gutsy). However, when trying the sound capture test from the Sound preferences in Ubuntu, I get the

Failed to construct test pipeline for 'gconfaudiosrc ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink profile=chat'

error. However, even when I get the error dialog, the sound capture test actually works.

When I run the test manually with gst-launch as Pavel showed, the sound capture test works without any working.

Therefore, the error message "Failed to construct test pipeline..." should probably not be taken at face value to figure out if sound capture works or not.

My suggestion is that if "aplay -l" shows that Alsa has found your HDA Intel device, then tinker with the volume control settings. There are many settings with somewhat random initial values.

[Hello_to_all (hellotoall)]

I Have the problem on my Dell inspiron 9400. A very useful information: <b>The mic worked fine on the Gusty live CD</b> but not once installed (I did the update, as of today, 30 Nov 2007).
I see many people saying it goes away by tinkering with mixer's setting, but I can't get it right. Can somebody please give his settings? I also saw someone say the problem was his card thought the mic was a line out for a multiple speaker setup. Does that help?

Please answer!

[Hello_to_all (hellotoall)]

[partiatly solved]
Found a mixer setting that worked:

1) open gnome-volume-control (in a terminal i guess; can't find it in menus)
2) Edit -> Preference , and check all the unchecked box
3) Make sure there is no item with it's volume at zero, or an icon barred by a red cross, including "capture mux" (in playback) and "capture" in recording.
4) test with sound recorder; if there is a problem, go back to gnome-volume-control, in the "option" tab, and change the "input source" (for me the right one was "mic"). Test for every input source.

I think that is fairly fool proof and should tell beginner what "tinkering with the mixer" means.

After that, the sound recorder accepted to launch, and worked; I still have the 'gconfaudiosrc ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink profile=chat' error for the capture test, but 2 seconds or so after it starts (and it works).

[marcelu80 (marcel-marti)]

Is that problem already solved? The last solution is not very convincent. It seems to be a common problem because it happens even in Ubuntu Studio. Please, I need to talk through Skype and I don't want to reboot to get the Windows mercy.

Thanks in advance!

[Hello_to_all (hellotoall)]

I wrote the "solution" you're referring to. Can you be more precise on why it didn't work?

[samborambo (sam-samborambo)]

I'm having this problem with every system I've installed Gutsy on or upgraded from Feisty.

While trying the microphone test in sound preferences:

Failed to construct test pipeline for 'gconfaudiosrc ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink profile=chat'

Playback works fine. All mixer switches are on and levels turned up. Gutsy has been out for a couple of months now. How come this issue hasn't been addressed? Are the bug maintainers having problems reproducing this problem? It hasn't even been assigned a priority level!

Sam.

[Hello_to_all (hellotoall)]

Just a small precision please: when you say all levels are turned up, do you mean in gnome-volume-control ? Avimuxer or Kmix for example are not enough. gnome-volume-control must be installed, it's not installed by default.

[Omegamormegil (omegamormegil)]

Sound capture not working seems to be independent of the error message. I still get this error message in Gutsy, but I got sound capture working fine after turning up the levels in alsamixer. Also, the error message no longer comes up in Hardy Alpha 3.

A bug that doesn't cause major problems, or one with a workaround usually won't be fixed after a release. The developers make sure it's fixed in the development version, so that it works in the upcoming release. If you have an annoying bug that can't wait 6 months, the Ubuntu Backports project can backport stuff fixed in the development version into the current release.

[marcelu80 (marcel-marti)]

That's true. There's no relation between the error message and the sound capture. I turned up a few control levels in alsamixer and my Skype is working fine again. Thank you all.

[muhalifsirin (alperense)]

I guess Ubuntu is microphone defective.

And I guess I am the proof for this deficiency, with using three different alternatives(devices):

I have a usb microphone on my webcam, it does not work. I also have microphone entrance on my onboard sound card, it does not work neither. (both for skype and sound capturing)

I tried everything to make them work, bought a couple of mics, tried every single combination on sound controllers and volume controllers. Tried every solution suggested on forums(including the ones suggested here).

Then finally I bought a pci soundcard which some people suggested was linux-proof(diamond 7.1). And still I can not make my microphone work on ubuntu. I live very far away to my country(in another continent) and I desperately need to use skype. And it is really annoying ending up spending more than a hundred dollars without any solution and I still need windows to use microphone.

[marcelu80 (marcel-marti)]

Are you sure that you have already tried this?

1) open gnome-volume-control (in a terminal i guess; can't find it in menus)
2) Edit -> Preference , and check all the unchecked box
3) Make sure there is no item with it's volume at zero, or an icon barred by a red cross, including "capture mux" (in playback) and "capture" in recording.

Actually you can do the same through the menus. Check that your sound selected device is the alsa one (alsa mixer) , not the OSS one (OSS mixer). And forget the test. Try it with your mic.

Good luck!

[muhalifsirin (alperense)]

Hi

Thanks for the answer:)

But as I said, I tried every single solution suggested before. Besides I tried nearly every permutation of configurations.

Nothing works at all!

As I said, I tried onboard sound card, USB webcam-microphone and Diamond 7.1 sound card.

And everytime I try to test my sound capture device, I get this:

gconfaudiosrc ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink profile=chat: Could not open resource for writing.

I also tried to launch them with gst launch, nothing happens

This problem really annoys me, because ubuntu was the distro which solved my hardware problems, it was the only distro that could make my Nvidia 8600gt, other than Pardus. I mean, come on, if you can build an OS that can run video cards that other distros give you nightmare, why can not you make a simple thing such as microphone run??I can say, a lot of people probably have this problem, but since normally no one uses microphone as much as they use their video card:)), most people do not notice or they do no care even if they notice-it is not as vital as one's video card or printer of course.so that this problem does not come out as often as it should

at least this what i guess, i might be wrong as well

[Hello_to_all (hellotoall)]

Hi muhalifsirin.

If you still have energy to try things out, my advice would be to burn CDs of previous versions of ubuntu (down to edgy) and try the mic with those (as live CDs).

I think one of the main problems of ubuntu currently is that gui tools aren't proprely configured (they don't link to the right shell command). This can appen when a new version comes along: the command has changed, but not the gui.
For exemple creating a wifi network with gui doesn't work, but in command line it does.

What I mean is the driver for our mic (or at least one of them) is probably there somewhere (that's what ubuntu is REALLY good at, and beleive me, when tried to install debian 4 years ago it was really worse).

Finding what exaclty causes those problems takes a lot of time and skill, but live CDs default configuration can work because they haven't accumulated as much conflicting configs.

hope that helps.

[muhalifsirin (alperense)]

well, for now I decided not to try the mic anymore. I will just wait for a major solution to come.

I also tired the live cd, no solution.

I can not install feisty, because the only way I can get my graphic card working is using the latest version of ubuntu(even 7.10 without updates can not run my graphic card properly. I have to finish all updates first)

So, I will just for now:(

-and I know that ubuntu is really good at using hardware, I tried a couple of other distros which gave me nightmares(especially suse). The only distributions I found well working were Ubuntu and Pardus

[muhalifsirin (alperense)]

well, I'd like to update my situation

sth strange happened today. all of a sudden, my microphone began to transmit my sound, and I can hear my echo from speakers. well i don't know what i did, all i know uninstalled every application related to sound other than i needed, in a chaotic manner. i also uninstalled some files related to alsa(some kind of drivers) also everything related to OSS

but now, soundrecorder gives the same error message. and worse of them, i can not use skype at all!! i mean it can be opened, but can not make a call, because of audio problems it says. before I could call, listen but could not talk. practically, i did not lose anything, well at least i can sing to myself from microphone. other than that, i did not have any problems with games, videos,music or internet.

[vmos (pcbadger)]

hallo, I'm on gutsy 7.10, installed from scratcha couple months ago, not an upgrade. Analogue mic. Sound worked fine but skype gave "call failed, audio playback error"
checked sound preferences, all ok except conferenceing sound capture which gave the error seen at the top
""Failed to construct test pipeline for 'gconfaudiosrc ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink profile=chat'""
faffed about with the settings a bit (can't remember exactly what, sorry) and sound recorder would work fine but I was still getting the error and skype still wouldn't work.
So I tried Aleph42s solution of setting all levels to non zero

now when I try testing the audio conferencing sound capture I get this error
"gconfaudiosrc ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink profile=chat: Resource busy or not available"
 and now sound recorder won't even start, it gives this error "Your audio capture settings are invalid. Please correct them in the Multimedia settings."

rest of the sound still seems to work though

[Hello_to_all (hellotoall)]

to vmos:

The "ressource busy" message sounds like the problem is that a soundcard doesn't support to be used by mor than one application. Do you have more than one soundcard, or a usb headset? If this is the case you should try disactivating it.

[vmos (pcbadger)]

I have no USB audio devices, my soundcard is a creative 5.1 which is usually alright with multiple aplications (besides It gives the error when there's no other apps running) I have an ac 97 built into the motherboard, it was disable in bios already but I tried deactivating it through the sound mixer, no change.
Incidentally I tried switching to pulse audio and that sets me back to the original "Failed to construct test pipeline " error
but if I set sound capture to pulse audio and set default mixer device to "capture - monitor source of alsa pcm" I can get sound recorder running again, although at very low volume

but no matter what I do, skype still won't work

also, also, "vumeter -r &" was working but somewhere around my fiddling with changing settings to pulseaudio and back it stopped reacting, even though I can still hear sound from the mic coming through the speakers.

I'll keep at it, if I make any progress I'll let you know

[vmos (pcbadger)]

ah, I uninstalled pulseaudio, now I'm back to the original pipeline error, soundrecorder works again but skype still won't and vumeter refuses to start at all

[vmos (pcbadger)]

just in case anybody else stumbles upon this thred (hello future people) this sorted out my skype problem
http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=111183

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Please execute the alsa-info.sh script referenced from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingSoundProblems and attach the URL here.

[Manuel Bärenz (turion)]

I had the same problem and solved it somehow:
I added in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base (open with root access) following line at the bottom:

options snd-atiixp model=hp position_fix=1 enable=yes

After restarting, the internal microphone as well as the plugged one worked exactly how you expect them to work.
I'm not completely shure why this works, so handle with care, probably it's not the optimal solution, but for me it worked.

[Manuel Bärenz (turion)]

Well, testing it for a longer time shows, that it consequently refuses to work after a random time, say 10 seconds or half an hour. Very annoying.

[Manuel Bärenz (turion)]

I'm sorry to have to add, that you probably have another driver, so try
options snd-hda-intel model=hp position_fix=1 enable=yes
instead.

[komputes (komputes)]

Can Pavel or another user with the HP NX6325 please run the following command and post the output.

$ lspci -nn | grep -i audio

[Manuel Bärenz (turion)]

I get:

00:14.2 Audio device [0403]: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB4x0 High Definition Audio Controller [1002:437b] (rev 01)

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

Hi Pavel,

This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p alsa-base 147298

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

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[Pavel Rojtberg (rojtberg)]

unfortunately I dont own the laptop any more. Maybe one of the other subscribers can verify.