Pulseaudio will not route internal/external mic to the speakers/headphones Karmic

[lastpokemon]

Binary package hint: pulseaudio

Recording works just fine with both MICs, Skype works fine with no issues at all. what i wanted to do is just route the MIC specially the exteranl MIC to the internal or external speaker by means if when i grap the mic and say Hellewwwo i can hear my voice through the speaker. this had always worked perior to Karmic. i didt tried all Pulseausio tutorials and installed all the extra bells and whistles but there seems no option to route the MIC to the speakers or even sing a Karaoke song.

example: this works in windows7 by ticking on the option listen to this device at the MIC preferences

[Luke Yelavich (themuso)]

This is a known bug. I am not sure whether upstream is working on a fix, however there is a high chance a solution will be provided in Lucid as part of the GUI. For now however, you will have to load alsamixer in a terminal and adjust mixer levels for line/microphone input to be able to do this.

 affects ubuntu/pulseaudio
 status confirmed

[Kurt Kraut (kurtkraut)]

Hi,

Even using alsamixer I'm unable to enable the microphone loopback/feedback in Lucid, which I used to do until Karmic. This seems to be a regression, not only a GUI issue.

[vocx (eliudcabrera)]

Kurt,

It is only a regression if pulseaudio worked before but it doesn't work now. As per the comment #1, it may seem that this feedback capability is not in pulseaudio at all. To anyone reading this, remember that in previous versions of Ubuntu the default audio server was Alsa, and when it changed to pulseaudio it broke many things for many users (but not for me, if I must say).

But, well, I wouldn't know exactly, since I don't even have a microphone and only a few times I've tried to use one. I found this bug report accidentally while trying to solve a different problem, but I provide a workaround using the Jack audio server that may work.

1. Install "qjackctl", a Qt frontend for the Jack Audio Connection Kit.
2. It will pull some dependencies, specially the "jackd" package which is the Jack server/daemon proper.
3. Open "qjackctl" and start the server. Hopefully it will work with the default values, otherwise you may need to click "Setup" and adjust the settings.
4. There is some documentation for Ubuntu: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToJACKConfiguration https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToQjackCtlConnections But perhaps a better documentation is found in the Jack Wiki http://trac.jackaudio.org/wiki
5. Essentially, adjust the controls (specially frame) to reduce the latency as much as possible, for instance from 50 ms to 11 ms. Also check that there are no XRUNs in the "Messages" and the "Status" windows in the main interface.
6. If the server seems to run okay, click "Connect".
7. In the "Audio" tab click on "system" in the "Readable Clients / Output Ports" and on "system" in the "Writeable Clients / Input Ports" windows. These represent the "sources" and "sinks" of audio.
8. Click "Connect". A line should be drawn indicating that the sound from the "capture" devices (microphone) is routed to the "playback" devices (speakers).
9. Every program that uses the Jack server will place different output and input ports and these may be wired as desired. For example, if Skype supports the Jack sever, it would be possible to use "capture" -> "Skype" and "capture" -> "playback", or perhaps "capture" -> "Skype" -> "playback", to send the sound to both Skype and the speakers.

In summary, this method worked for me but it may not be ideal for every case or may not work at all. Also, I think that if Jack is running and you have outputs routed to the playback devices, other audio programs may not work at all because the playback resources are already used. This happened for me with Audacious.

[James Haigh (james.r.haigh)]

It looks like a regression. Pulseaudio has been default since Hardy (8.04). IIRC, I'm pretty sure that this worked for me in Hardy and Jaunty (9.04). People are reporting that it does not work in Karmic (9.10) and later. I can confirm that it does not work in Natty (11.04), the latest release.

If this is all correct, then since Pulseaudio was made default in Hardy, this functionality worked for 3 releases then stopped working for 4 releases and still counting. I hope this is fixed by the next release.

[Ben (9-admin-bm91-net)]

Use this command to route the mic input through output:
'pactl load-module module-loopback latency_msec=10' (default is 200)

this command will give you a number as output, for example 27. to stop the loopback execute:

'pactl unload-module 27' (replace 27 with the output of the previous command)

[Dave M (davem-mich)]

I confirm that it does not work in Oneiric (11.10), the latest release. I was not able to use gnome-alsamixer either. It installs but does not do anything when I click the icon. No errors and no alsa mixer window...

[Dave M (davem-mich)]

I did get alsamixer to work from the command line. Open the terminal and type alsamixer at the prompt.

[João Miguel Lopes Moreira (jmlm-1970)]

The only solution to make microphone work is to install linux-backports-modules-alsa-generic...

Just go to:

Menu / System / Administration / Synaptic Package Manager

And search and mark for installation:

linux-backports-modules-alsa-generic

tip: if you have multiple versions click on the first and read the description which should inform what name to install...

If after the reboot and mic mute is off, still does not work, just go to terminal and type:

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

and add or change the following:

options snd-hda-intel model=auto enable=yes

Then Ctrl+X, type Y to write and exit, reboot and mic will work.

Bye and have lots of fun with Ubuntu (the best).

[Eric Kertz (erickertz)]

Still seems to be an issue in 13.04 :(

For a little workaround that seems to be working, I installed "PulseAudio Preferences" in the Software Center and then from within the app:

check: Multicast/RTP->Enable Multicast/RTP reciever
check: Multicast/RTP->Enable Multicast/RTP sender
select: Send audio from local microphone
check: Loop back audio to local speakers

Hope this helps someone else.

[Raymond (superquad-vortex2)]

all aamix inputs are muted by default if your hda codec have this feature

you have to turn on "loopback playing switch"

https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/tiwai/sound.git/log/sound/pci/hda?qt=grep&q=loopback

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic) reached end-of-life on April 30, 2011.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

Please upgrade to the latest version and re-test.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Closed due to no response.