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externalmicro on laptop Acer ; Buster 10.13

Graphical Environments, Managers, Multimedia & Desktop questions.
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OldboyPapy
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Joined: 2022-10-03 09:59

externalmicro on laptop Acer ; Buster 10.13

#1 Post by OldboyPapy »

Hello to all,

For a long time I've been struggling with multimedia with my successive Debians.
The problem seems very simple. The internal microphone of the laptop is not so good and I want to connect an external microphone, through the headset/microphone port (jack 3.5) of the PC.
OK, it's a 4-ring 3.5 jack (ground + right ear + left ear + microphone). So I use either a headset with microphone or a special "Y" to separate microphone and headset. BUT it doesn't work. The sound arrives well in the headset, but the selected microphone is always that of the PC. (The headset one is not even detected). I naively thought it was plug&play. On the forums, I don't understand the answers (often very broken, even contemptuous) that talk about alsa, jack and so on. There is always an ambiguity between "jack" as a physical plug and jack as a Linux module to manage the sound. As for managing the cohabitation of all this world, I have the impression that few know how to do it and many answer randomly.

-> I've been using the same module for a while now, but with audacity running and the headset plugged into the jack, in pulse-audio, the recording tab is empty,
* the recording tab is empty, although I ask for the "all stream" display
* the input devices tab (whose selector is set to "Display All input devices") has two zones :
1) the "monitor of internal stereo analog audio" area shows ONLY the internal microphone port, set to 66% (L and R)
2) the "internal stereo analog audio" zone offers ONLY the "Microphone" selection. Its "advenced" zone displays "latency 0.00
the two zones display a vu-meter and they are not really correlated
* there is no "capture" tab
* the configuration tab is set to "analog stereo duplex".
Can someone serious help me (thanks ;) )

OldboyPapy
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Re: externalmicro on laptop Acer ; Buster 10.13

#2 Post by OldboyPapy »

Well, well... no one around... sorry to have bothered you

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FreewheelinFrank
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Re: externalmicro on laptop Acer ; Buster 10.13

#3 Post by FreewheelinFrank »

The BIOS will sometimes misreport a jack as a headphone jack when it is actually a combined jack. Use hdajackretask from the alsa-tools package to look at what is reported on that pin. If it says only headphone, change it to combined mic and headphone, then apply boot override and reboot. I've done it on my laptop - I'll add a screenshot when I am at the laptop again.

Lebsasha
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Re: externalmicro on laptop Acer ; Buster 10.13

#4 Post by Lebsasha »

I had the same problem in Debian 10 and now in Debian 11, since two months ago I upgraded from Buster to Bullsyeye. Currently I have following settings:
Image

First of all, how to choose combined Mic and Headphone, i.e. how to simultaneously choose both Microphone and Headphone in Device dropdown list in hdajackretask? Currently I could choose only one option at a time.
Secondly, even if I choose Microphone device, no microphone actually becomes available, only Internal one remains.

P.S.: I want to share solution to one problem, that I faced when interacting with the program. When I pressing button "Apply now" in hdajackretask, it shows error: "tee: /sys/class/sound/hwC0D0/reconfig: Device or resource busy". I searched on the web for a solution for this error and figured out that it is related to the fact that Pulseaudio daemon is immediately restored after being killed, thus preventing from writing anything to its runtime files. To avoid this, run

Code: Select all

$ systemctl --user stop pulseaudio.socket pulseaudio.service
as regular user. This will stop Pulseaudio letting you seamlessly apply settings. Don't forget to start Pulseaudio again when testing applied settings!

Code: Select all

$ systemctl --user start pulseaudio.socket pulseaudio.service
This solution found here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/554700/445436

@FreewheelinFrank
Last edited by Lebsasha on 2022-12-05 07:28, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: externalmicro on laptop Acer ; Buster 10.13

#5 Post by FreewheelinFrank »

Lebsasha wrote: 2022-12-04 23:30 I had the same problem in Debian 10 and now in Debian 11, since two months ago I upgraded from Buster to Bullsyeye. Currently I have following settings:

Image

First of all, how to choose combined Mic and Headphone, i.e. how to simultaneously choose both Microphone and Headphone in Device dropdown list in hdajackretask? Currently I could choose only one option at a time.
I may have misremembered what I did. I think I had to tick "Show unconnected pins" and one of those was actually the combined jack. I haven't used that laptop in a while. I will get it out in the morning and check what I actually did.

Yes, you need to stop Pulseaudio if you want to experiment. If you find something that works, apply the boot override.

I fixed your image link: use the BBCode thumbnail link at the bottom of the page.

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Re: externalmicro on laptop Acer ; Buster 10.13

#6 Post by Lebsasha »

Finally, I figured it out. There is 0x18 pin, that responsible for external microphone recognizing.
I configure 0x18 pin as follows:
Connectivity: Jack
Location: External
Device: Microphone
Jack: 3.5 mm
Color (althrought no matter): Red
Jack detection: Present
Channel group: 2
Channel (in group): Front

and it works.
Image

If 0x18 pin not works, on the Internet somewho said, that 0x12 or 0x13 pin should be overriden instead https://askubuntu.com/a/904654.
I have Asus X553MA notebook.

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Re: externalmicro on laptop Acer ; Buster 10.13

#7 Post by FreewheelinFrank »

I checked my laptop today and it was an unconnected pin that handled the external microphone, which had to be enabled like you say in addition to the headphone pin, not as a combined jack.

Glad you got it working

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