Ubuntu

acer aspire 4720 sound card Intel alc268 mic disfunctional

Asked by be4truth on 2007-12-29

Hi Everybody,

got a new laptop Acer Aspire 4720 which is sold in India without Microsoft tax. I am running Gutsy on it and am happy since almost everything works out of the box. I will soon write a laptop test and post it.
The only thing I can't get going so far is the mic. Not only that the build-in mic doesn't work but my external mic doesn't help either. The laptop comes with an Intel sound card with an ALC268 chip set.
The sound works fine. After spending now several hours googeling around and following all kinds of suggestion I and quite a number of other people can't get the mic going.
Is the mic in general supported or not?

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)

Thank you for any help on this matter
be4truth

Question information

Language:
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Status:
Expired
For:
Ubuntu Edit question
Assignee:
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Last query:
2008-01-02
Last reply:
2008-01-17
marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : #1

Try to install the latest Alsa may resolve your issue

Open a terminal and type:
sudo -i
give your user password, you don't see nothing when type it, then press enter

apt-get update
apt-get install wget build-essential ncurses-dev libncurses5-dev gettext linux-headers-$(uname -r)
mkdir /usr/src/alsa-source
cd /usr/src/alsa-source
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/driver/alsa-driver-1.0.15.tar.bz2
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/lib/alsa-lib-1.0.15.tar.bz2
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/utils/alsa-utils-1.0.15.tar.bz2
tar xjf alsa-driver-1.0.15.tar.bz2
tar xjf alsa-lib-1.0.15.tar.bz2
tar xjf alsa-utils-1.0.15.tar.bz2

cd alsa-driver-1.0.15
./configure --with-cards=hda-intel
make
make install

cd alsa-lib-1.0.15
./configure
make
make install

cd alsa-utils-1.0.15
./configure
make
make install

Then open the file
nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

and change the model options for example (find it on reference pages below):
options snd-hda-intel model=acer

Reboot your pc

be4truth (short-unique-name-in-use) said : #2

Did that. How can I check if the OS uses the Gutsy 1.0.14 or the new version? So far no improvement.

be4truth (short-unique-name-in-use) said : #3

How do I know that Gutsy uses alsa 1.0.15 instead of 1.0.14?

be4truth (short-unique-name-in-use) said : #4

IF I load alsamixer it shows now 1.0.15. I found this link : https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/AcerAspire5610
This describes the problem quite accurate.

Sound

The soundcard is recognized as an HDA Intel one. When I was first testing, the sound volume was pretty low, even when the mixer controls were at maximum (including in alsamixer). To fix this, I noticed that totem controlled some other (hidden) sound control. So I played something in totem and maxed the control, reducing after in the "normal" volume control. This seemed at least to get the volume to an acceptable level, though the quality sounds low. Also, the microphone is incredibly low, so low that only speaking very near it one can record (verly low) sound. This looks like some alsa driver problem, according to some forums. In Feisty it works almost as expected. There's just some problems with the microphone capture. To make it work (at least in audacity, one has to go to gnome-volume-control and enable the options, then select "Mic" for both input sources, then adjust the mic volumes accordingly. In Gutsy the mic is still very low. Setting it to a high volume produces microphony.

Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : #5

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.