ALC662, SBx00 Azalia Intel HDA, Alsa 1.0.22.1, Line-In and Mics not captured

[MMarking]

00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)

card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC662 rev1 Analog [ALC662 rev1 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 1: ALC662 rev1 Digital [ALC662 rev1 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

There is some problem with the 1.0.22.1 alsa driver from Karmic's linux-backports-modules-alsa package, because when I have it installed I am unable to record sounds coming from the Line-In or the Mics. I can hear them, but I cannot route them to a recording device using the "sound preferences" or Pulseaudio tools. When I uninstall linux-backports-modules-alsa and revert to Alsa 1.0.20, everything works normally.

I wanted to report this because I noticed Lucid is using 1.0.22 as default, so this is probably going to be an issue down the road. The Alsa change log for 1.0.21 to 1.0.22 indicates "ALSA: hda - Fix capture source checks for ALC662/663 codecs", I don't know if that has anything to do with it or not.

There is also some discussion of the issue here, http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1381013

For all I know this may be a problem with Pulseaudio. The "sound preferences" and Pulseaudio tools have exactly the same options in them with 1.0.20 or 1.0.22.1 installed, but the difference with 1.0.22.1 is that routing audio for recording just doesn't do anything.

Alsamixer has slightly different capture check boxes in it when 1.0.22.1 is installed, which may be related to the change log statement for 1.0.22, but I tried using the checkboxes in different ways and it doesn't make any difference.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Please remove linux-backports-modules and use linux-alsa-driver-modules-2.6.31-19-generic from the ubuntu-audio-dev PPA.

[MMarking (cpt-mocha)]

I'm using the latest kernel 2.6.31-20-generic, you guys only have packages up to 2.6.31-19. What are the differences in your release versus the official repo alsa-backports?

[MMarking (cpt-mocha)]

Please close this as invalid. I discovered that by adding "position_fix=1" to my alsa module options the capture problems go away. For other people's benefit, here is my sound hardware info:

00:14.2 Audio device [0403]: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) [1002:4383]
        Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device [1565:820f]
        Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=slow >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
        Latency: 64, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
        Interrupt: pin ? routed to IRQ 16
        Region 0: Memory at f9ff4000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=55mA PME(D0+,D1-,D2-,D3hot+,D3cold+)
                Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
        Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
        Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

http://mailman.alsa-project.org/pipermail/alsa-devel/2010-March/025880.html