dell xps m1330 regression, integrated digital microphone no longer working [karmic/lucid]

I can confirm the microphone issue in Karmic, the internal microphone used to work out of the box but no longer picks up any sound after recent updates.

I however can't reproduce the line out issue, so it probably belongs as a separate bug. Regarding that, make sure that you were plugging it into the first (left-most) line out. For me, if I plug ONLY into the second line out, it mutes the sound but nothing comes out, it might be a bug, I just assumed if you only have one sound device plugged in it ha to be in the first port.

Well, the sound came out normally even when the jack of my external speaker was plugged to the central jack (line out). After the updates, instead, the situation is that one we have both described.

Have you both tried choosing an audio output/input duplex profile from the volume control appet preferences, in the hardware tab?

Yes indeed Luke, the profile has remained unchanged. Neither of my
output+input duplex options are able to get sound anymore, though both
could just fine before the recent updates.

On my XPSM1330 the internal microphone also don't work.... line out with headphones is fine. Think the internal microphone is only not working, because it records the sound from the external microphone all the time! Changes in the input settings don't change anything... it's not possible to change the settings beetween the internal and the external microphone

Okay, I found a solution/work-around, although the fact that it
stopped working seems to be caused by a regression via updates. Though
I suppose the people experiencing it could have something else
problematic in common. What I needed to do to get the internal mic
working was run "sudo alsamixer", navigate over to "Digital Input
Source" via the arrow keys, and press "+" to change it from "Analog
Inputs" to "Digital Mic 1". Then everything was working again like it
was a week or so ago! I believe then you need to run "sudo alsactl
store" to make it stick. Attached is a screenshot of the alsamixer
setting.

Any ideas on if anything in the sound stack changed recently that
would change the "Digital" Input Source to use "Analog" Inputs? That
setting doesn't even seem to make sense.

Looking at the reporter's "Card0.Amixer.values.txt", I see the same problem exists:

Simple mixer control 'Digital Input Source',0
  Capabilities: enum
  Items: 'Analog Inputs' 'Digital Mic 1'
  Item0: 'Analog Inputs'

Here again the digital input is actually set to analog, not the functional digital mic.

You should also be able to do that from the input tab of the volume applet preferences. If you can't then its known, can't remember the bug number atm, but I believe work is ongoing up strea to make this work better.

This is also likely related to the alsa-utils regression. You should be able
to reproduce the issue in current Karmic without the ubuntu-audio-dev PPA
enabled.

On Oct 18, 2009 11:55 PM, "Luke Yelavich" <email address hidden>
wrote:

You should also be able to do that from the input tab of the volume
applet preferences. If you can't then its known, can't remember the bug
number atm, but I believe work is ongoing up strea to make this work
better.

-- dell xps m1330 regression, integrated digital microphone no longer
working [karmic beta] https:...

Using the input tab provides a "Connector" drop-down which
not-very-helpfully lists "Microphone 1" and "Microphone 2". However
these have been functionally the same in all of my testing; when the
integrated digital mic was working I could have either of these
selected and it made no difference. Now that it isn't working, neither
of them work.

If you can point me to any of the other bugs that might be useful. The
main point is that this mic initially worked out of the box providing
an excellent, zero-config VOIP experience, but it no longer seems to
which is unfortunate, especially for a laptop which shipped with
Ubuntu. It would be lovely to have this *just work* since I doubt many
users are familiar with alsamixer :) I can happily test various
ISOs/PPAs if you like!

Daniel, what do you mean by "You should be able to reproduce the issue
in current Karmic without the ubuntu-audio-dev PPA enabled." Isn't
that what I've done?

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 12:24 AM, Michael Rooney <email address hidden> wrote:
> If you can point me to any of the other bugs that might be useful. The
> main point is that this mic initially worked out of the box providing
> an excellent, zero-config VOIP experience, but it no longer seems to
> which is unfortunate, especially for a laptop which shipped with
> Ubuntu. It would be lovely to have this *just work* since I doubt many
> users are familiar with alsamixer :) I can happily test various
> ISOs/PPAs if you like!

You can try reverting alsa-utils to 1.0.20-2ubuntu3. The issue here is
that we have an alsa-utils regression that is "bubbling up" through
the stack.

Ok. I added alsa-utils in the list of the affected projects.

@Luke I've already tried all the profiles in the volume manager.

I can also confirm this issue on my XPS M1330 running 9.10. Plug in mic works fine as either mic 1 or mic 2, but internal mic is not even shown as an option. The workaround mentioned using sudo alsamixer does not work for me as alsamixer does not show entry for digital mic either. It almost seems that the hardware is not recognized. It worked previous versions although at low volume,

Same for my Dell xps m1330. Anyway I found similar problem on my netbook Sony Vaio

As I'm experiencing this bug too, on an xps m1330n, i did a little bit of research.
I tried to follow the walkthrough in post #7 but that failed, as I couldn't change the mic input.
I then reverted alsa-utils and alsa base to the first karmic version (1.0.18 for both of them) and, while the mic was not functioning straight away, I followed the forementioned walkthrough which resulted in a **functioning** mic.

It therefore seems an alsa related bug.
I will try to narrow down the problem tonight.

ps: i downloaded alsa-base and alsa-utils from https://edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/amd64/alsa-base/ and

After doing what I described in post #17 (which got the mic working) I updated again to the latest alsa-base (1.0.20+dfsg-1ubuntu5) and alsa-utils((1.0.20-2ubuntu6) and the mic has kept working. I suppose that the walkthrough in post #7 has to be done before updating?

@Luca Invernizzi

Merging all the workarouds, as you made, now it works even with my laptop. Thanks.

Anyway it still remains a bug to be solved. We are geek and we can try to turn around difficulties, but Ubuntu should be also "for human beings".

@vilnos
Excellent, so it wasn't just plain luck :-D
I totally agree that it has to be solved, but some geeks may need to use skype now. Anyway, I hope that it helps the devs in some way

I tried "packages regression" of alsa-utils and alsa-base (i386) but it didn't work for me as alsamixer has not the "Digital" tab

Same issue with precision M4400. The internal mic worked on a clean 9.10 install but external mic would not. The only way to get the external mic working is to run alsamixer and change the digital input to analog. To revert to the internal mic I have to run alsamixer and set the digital input to digital mic.

@GaryParr
Given your comments, this is hardly a linux regression.

@Daniel T Chen

This is what happens when you have 5 different bug reports open trying to track down the one most relevant... you sometimes post incomplete information in the wrong thread.

However, since I'm here I would like to add that I installed linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmix-generic in my first attempt to get my external mix working on my clean install last month. This did enable the external mic but disabled the internal one. It was only after removing the backport module that I discovered the trick of switching the digital input. So, perhaps I posted in the wrong place but the symptoms are the same/similar so make of it what you will.

I have upgraded my current pulseaudio version from 0.9.19 to 0.9.21 (last release) in karmic using:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

but mic is still not working :(

@slamdunk:

Please try the following approach:
1. open pulseaudio sound preferences (I use the gnome applet)
2. open the "input" tab
3. in a terminal start "alsamixer -V=all"
4. move to "Input Source [Mic]" with "cursor right" and switch to "Digital" with "cursor up" or "cursor down"
5. check whether your mic works using the volume meter in the pulseaudio sound preferences

I have to do this each time I boot my Dell laptop since I didn't yet find a better solution. Obviously pulseaudio doesn't offer to select the digital mic as input source although alsa knows it. Any idea whether it is a software bug or which config file has to be changed?

@Klaus

I have followed ur steps but I can get mic-in working. I have tried to swtich pulseaudio profiles too, but not success at all, just noise on the volume meter

thanks

@slamdunk

Well, I hope it was worth trying (and I assume you got a digital mic). I've successfully used this approach with Dell Latitudes E4300 and E6400.

P.S.: Just if you want to try - I've installed alsa 1.0.22 from https://launchpad.net/~thefirstm/+archive/experimental. It is packaged for Lucid but works well with my Karmic with a 2.6.32 kernel. But I always make a backup of the partition before starting this type of experiments ...

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 11:30 AM, Klaus Meijners <email address hidden> wrote:
> I have to do this each time I boot my Dell laptop since I didn't yet
> find a better solution.

I think if you read the other comments here it is mentioned that the
solution to make this option persistent is to run "sudo alsactl store"
after making the changes, then you won't have to do it after each
boot.

@Michael:

I've stored the settings in asound.state but they aren't reloaded at startup. I've therefore added the command "alsactl restore" to my startup applications.

@Klaus

great! it works now!
I've upgraded alsa-stuff from repository u reported and I've repeated steps above.
So this problem seems related to alsa rather pulse-audio (though I've upgraded pulse-audio as well)

thanks

"sudo alsactl store" doesn't work for me too
After a reboot I have to launch alsamixer and set to digital mic-input-source

Not sure if my problem is related to this one but the symptoms sure are similar. I've got a spanking new Sony VAIO CW-series notebook and after a fresh install of 9.10 Sound was working perfectly, playback, the internal digital mic, my bluetooth headset (including A2DP), the lot. But soon after some upgrade broke a bunch of stuff, here's an assessment of the situation:
- Internal mic doesn't work. Alslamixer reports three capture devices but only lets me choose between "front mic, mic, line and CD", not a word of the digital input there.
- Line in jack on the computer works but I haven't got an external mic so that's not of much use (tested it with headphones)
- I'm having problems with audio playback from Spotify running under Wine. Sound crackles, sometimes stutters and occasionally the entire application stops outputting sound at all.
- Bluetooth headset no longer works as sound input but playback works fine(!)

I've tried upgrading alsa to 1.0.22 but still no go.

comment #7 also does it for me.
thank you, nevertheless a fix would be nice;)

Perhaps i should mention that i use Lucid Lynx with KDE and that it still works after a restart with having executed "sudo alsactl store" one time.

Cause broken hard drive I've reinstalled Ubuntu 9.10 from scratch 10 days ago without using extra repository upgrading alsa/pulse and sound recording works fine now. So maybe the problem was related to the upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10

I have this problem too.

Ubuntu Lucid 10.04.
I have the same hardware of the reporter (I check the PCImultimedia file)

Some package versions:
linux 2.6.32.13.13
pulseaudio 0.9.22~0.9.21+stable-queue-32-g8478-0ubuntu5
alsa-base 1.0.22.1+dfsg-0ubuntu3

The almixer tip didn't work for me as alsamixer has not the "Input Source [Mic]" switch

Yes Javier, the situation seems worse in Lucid as the "Input Source [Mic]" switch is missing as of the daily ISO today, so there isn't even a workaround that I'm aware of. It doesn't appear there is a way to use the integrated microphone on Dell XPS systems in Lucid, though someone please correct me if I'm wrong!

I filed bug #533877 for the Lucid issue (no digital mic options at all) since it seems to be quite a different bug being in a different version, having a different cause, and not being able to be worked around in the same way as this one.

What the driver exposes as mixer enums has changed between Karmic and Lucid. The root cause in pulse of *this* bug, however, lies in the following:

;;; 'Digital Input Source'

[Element Digital Input Source]
enumeration = select

[Option Digital Input Source:Analog Inputs]
name = input

[Option Digital Input Source:Digital Mic 1]
name = input-microphone

[Option Digital Input Source:Digital Mic 2]
name = input-microphone

Note how Digital Mic 1 *follows* Analog Inputs.

I'm inclined to think that the skew in mixer enums as exposed by different driver versions isn't really worth fixing for Karmic.

Daniel, if this isn't going to be fixed for Karmic, it seems like the fix for bug #533877 would make this bug fixed as well, right?

It depends on the driver (and thus, linux) version used.

On Mar 12, 2010 7:50 PM, "Michael Rooney" <email address hidden> wrote:

Daniel, if this isn't going to be fixed for Karmic, it seems like the
fix for bug #533877 would make this bug fixed as well, right?

--
dell xps m1330 regression, integrated digital microphone no longer working
[karmic/lucid]
https...

With the change that I just committed, we should now be able to handle the digital mic on both Karmic and Lucid kernels.

This bug was fixed in the package pulseaudio - 1:0.9.22~0.9.21+stable-queue-32-g8478-0ubuntu13

---------------
pulseaudio (1:0.9.22~0.9.21+stable-queue-32-g8478-0ubuntu13) lucid; urgency=low

  [ Daniel T Chen ]
  * 0093-backport-fixes-stable-queue-head.patch: Backport the following
    changesets from the stable-queue branch:
    + a7c1778 (don't pick monitor sources automatically for role-based
               device selection).
    + e8b83fa (handle asyncns failure when IPv6 is not supported in the
               kernel).
  * 0096-lp453966-handle-digmic-pt2.patch: Raise the priority of the
    'Digital Mic 1' digital input source for newer Dell laptops.
    (LP: #453966)
  * 0096-lp451635-handle-dove-x0-line-hp-swap.patch: Add 'Line HP Swap'
    to the Headphone profile. (LP: #451635)
  * debian/control: Update Vcs-Bzr to point to new branch that uses pack
    repo format 2a.
 -- Daniel T Chen <email address hidden> Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:58:46 -0700