Realtek ALC272. Empathy kills microphone

**uaaquarius** · August 8th, 2010

Hi,

I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 (i686) on Acer Aspire 5551G. This laptop has Realtek ALC272 sound chip. Both sound and microphone work fine. But, when I start video/audio call in Empathy the microphone dies until I reboot the laptop (sound continues to work). The same happens with Pidgin and Ekiga. So, I can't make video/audio calls.

Any ideas?

I believe this is pulse/alsa bug.

Thanks in advance

**simosx** · August 9th, 2010

Originally Posted by uaaquarius

Hi,

I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 (i686) on Acer Aspire 5551G. This laptop has Realtek ALC272 sound chip. Both sound and microphone work fine. But, when I start video/audio call in Empathy the microphone dies until I reboot the laptop (sound continues to work). The same happens with Pidgin and Ekiga. So, I can't make video/audio calls.

Any ideas?

I believe this is pulse/alsa bug.

Thanks in advance

It sounds like a PulseAudio bug, which might be caused by issues with Alsa.
The workaround would be to restart PulseAudio to get the mic working.
Of course, this should not happen it is would be good to figure out who is at fault, so that we inform either Alsa or PulseAudio.

There is a tool to retrieve the full Alsa details, with alsa-info.sh.
To run alsa-info.sh,

wget www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh -O alsa-info.sh && bash alsa-info.sh

You are prompted to send the details to the alsa-project.org website; select Yes and write down the URL you will be given. This URL has your soundcard information; reply here with this URL.

**uaaquarius** · August 9th, 2010

Originally Posted by simosx

This URL has your soundcard information; reply here with this URL.

Hi, simosx!

Here is the URL:
http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=16...48907c77fc340c

**simosx** · August 9th, 2010

Originally Posted by uaaquarius

Hi, simosx!

Here is the URL:
http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=16...48907c77fc340c

Your Alsa settings look fine. You specify the Alsa model 'toshiba', probably following some instructions from other sources.

According to
http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Docum...-Models.txt#91
the ALC272 does not have a 'toshiba' model.
Does sound work for you if you unset the model? Setting it to 'toshiba' might be an issue.

I think Ekiga does not support Pulseaudio yet and I am not sure about Pidgin.

What I would recommend (after fixing the 'toshiba') is to kill PulseAudio and run it again as

pulseaudio -vvvv

which will show lots of debugging information. Try to perform a recording with the sound recorder and observe the output.

Then, try out empathy. You can try with voice-only call, to eliminate any video interactions.

**uaaquarius** · August 9th, 2010

Hi, simosx!

Yes, "toshiba" was added by me when I tried to fix the microphone

OK, I commented it out and restarted pulseaudio. Not sure if I restarted it correctly, I used those commands:

Code:

gksu /etc/init.d/pulseaudio stop
gksu killall pulseaudio
gksu /etc/init.d/pulseaudio start

Then I run

Code:

pulseaudio -vvvv

which resulted in

Code:

I: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_NICE, (31, 31)) failed: Operation not permitted
I: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_RTPRIO, (9, 9)) failed: Operation not permitted
D: core-rtclock.c: Timer slack is set to 50 us.
D: core-util.c: RealtimeKit worked.
I: core-util.c: Successfully gained nice level -11.
I: main.c: This is PulseAudio 0.9.21-63-gd3efa-dirty
D: main.c: Compilation host: i486-pc-linux-gnu
D: main.c: Compilation CFLAGS: -g -O2 -g -Wall -O3 -Wall -W -Wextra -pipe -Wno-long-long -Winline -Wvla -Wno-overlength-strings -Wunsafe-loop-optimizations -Wundef -Wformat=2 -Wlogical-op -Wsign-compare -Wformat-security -Wmissing-include-dirs -Wformat-nonliteral -Wold-style-definition -Wpointer-arith -Winit-self -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wfloat-equal -Wmissing-prototypes -Wstrict-prototypes -Wredundant-decls -Wmissing-declarations -Wmissing-noreturn -Wshadow -Wendif-labels -Wcast-align -Wstrict-aliasing=2 -Wwrite-strings -Wno-unused-parameter -ffast-math -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fno-common -fdiagnostics-show-option
D: main.c: Running on host: Linux i686 2.6.32-24-generic #39-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 28 06:07:29 UTC 2010
D: main.c: Found 2 CPUs.
I: main.c: Page size is 4096 bytes
D: main.c: Compiled with Valgrind support: no
D: main.c: Running in valgrind mode: no
D: main.c: Running in VM: no
D: main.c: Optimized build: yes
D: main.c: All asserts enabled.
I: main.c: Machine ID is 084cdccf7136c823047702a34c4b9a8e.
I: main.c: Session ID is 084cdccf7136c823047702a34c4b9a8e-1281390582.698301-1463995618.
I: main.c: Using runtime directory /home/batky/.pulse/084cdccf7136c823047702a34c4b9a8e-runtime.
I: main.c: Using state directory /home/batky/.pulse.
I: main.c: Using modules directory /usr/lib/pulse-0.9.21/modules.
I: main.c: Running in system mode: no
E: pid.c: Daemon already running.
E: main.c: pa_pid_file_create() failed.

Then I tested Sound Recorder. It was it was working like a charm.
Then I tested audio call with Empathy. It was quite bad: a lot of clunking like "chuk-chuk" on another computer (also running Ubuntu), some disruption, in general it was very hard to understood. The sound from another computer was heard excellently on this Acer.
Then I tried video call with Empathy. Which killed the microphone again. It does not work (e.g. in Sound Recorder) until I reboot

Here is my updated result of alsa-info.sh:
http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=31...4b2e63c45e0ff3

Any ideas?

Thanks

**lidex** · August 10th, 2010

I would start with an alsa upgrade using the link in my sig. You'll probably still need to specify a model in alsa-base.conf, but it looks like a generic one. How many analog audio jacks are there? Digital? Number of sound channels supported?