Mic stopped working on Linux Mint
 

Hi,

I have a Toshiba Satellite, and I use Linux Mint Cinnamon.
Everything was fine until last Saturday, when my microphone stopped working. The only thing one can ear is noise, if I scream I can barely distinguish it in the background. I thought it was a problem of configuration due to an updated package, so I've updated the whole system from the v16 to v17, but without any improvement.

The configuration in alsamixer is the following one:
http://postimg.org/image/rghafv8r5/
but, following an incredible number of threads in different forums, I've tried all the possible combinations/all the possible tools to change settings.
Any idea?
Thanks a lot in advance!!
R

Hi glacier.2000, Welcome to LQ. Please post the results of the following:

Good luck. ;-)

Hi,

Thanks for your answer, here is the output of the command:

Have a nice day!
R

Maybe (I could be wrong) the mic somehow became muted-?

Open the terminal and type:
Raise up all of the columns, pcm, master and the mic too. If at the bottom of any of the columns you see this:
That means it's muted. [oo] means unmuted.

This video should help:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWmXG-e6yzI

HTH

yep, i can see from the screenshot it's muted.

I've tried un-muting the microphone, but the only thing I can hear is a rustle (the strong white noise above mentioned). For other configurations in alsamixer (with MIC un-muted), I hear nothing.
I have read on the Internet that could be due to the fact that the system "hallucinates" and thinks it has a stereo microphone, therefore I should suppress one of the two channels (either left or right). I tried playing with all the possibilities for both MIC and the digital MIC, still no luck......
Any other suggestion?
Thanks a lot for your answers!!
R

Run this command that our Guru asked in post #2.
Post the output in code tags so he can read through it and advise you.

@ztocrat: op did that already.
let's hope peacedog had something in mind when asking for it.

Some mic types require a small voltage. Some soundcards do not provide this voltage. It's sometimes referred to as plug-in power. When an electret mic doesn't have it explicitly it can have the behavior mentioned.

Or it could be something simple like things defaulting to muted on new installs. Although I wouldn't rule out hardware as most mics do not favor humidity or being wet or physical abuse. Cold dry outside to warm humid inside can cause condensation on parts. Or climate controlled office to hot and humid florida like outside.

It could be that the problem is hardware, although I have never moved or crashed into the microphone. I would, however, totally esclude something climate-related (no excessive cold/hot/humidity...)

Right, thanks-
I see in post #3 the output-

Sorry I don't know how to test for hardware failure associated with a sound card, except for Memtest but that's for testing the RAM-

Running the command: aplay -l should show what sound card you have.

Once you know what sound card it is maybe there will be something online or in the Linux Mint Forum in regard to behavior your having. I'm not sure if there are known issues with that particular card and Mint.

Like Shadow_7 said some don't have that voltage:-

Here's the output of aplay
I will try this afternoon with a different live distro to see if this is really an hardware-related problem.
Thanks!!!
R

According to Google this is french-
Sous-périphériques: 1/1 means subdevices.
Carte means card and device3 is HDMI meaning High Definition Multimedia Interface.

You could research the HDA Intel PCH Analog card 95HD99Bxx online.
It could be a bug but I am not sure.

I'm thinking that if another distro has the same issue it could very well be a hardware problem.

Sometimes and in some cases if one is having performance or hardware issue's installing a higher version of the kernel can help solve that.

Maybe one of our members running Mint has experience with installing a newer kernel.
Sorry, I don't:-

https://www.kernel.org/
http://www.wikihow.com/Install-and-U...-on-Linux-Mint

I was inquiring for the codec of the chip as alsa has many options that can be passed depending on the codec. Please also post the results of the following:

Good luck. ;-)

I'll post the config file as soon as I'm back home.
The very strange thing is that, apparently, everything came out of blue sky after it worked like a charm for more than 6 months. The only things I could blame are either Skype (I had removed the "adjust automatically the volumes" option, but it automagically came back on) or an update (but, as far as I remember, I did no kernel updates in the past week and everything worked until my last skype call 10 days ago...). :confused:

Fixed!!
I've started the notebook with a USB key and replicated the alsamixer settings, which were working for the live version. The mic has to be muted, while the digital one un-muted... It's crazy, I have changed them multiple times and this never worked... :confused:
Also, it seems like the volumes change as they wish, without any control.... But that's a minor problem, now I can finally make the phone calls! :)
Thanks to everyone who helped me!
Have a nice week-end!
R

Glad you got this sorted.

Good luck. ;-)