[Asus X401U] external mic does not work

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We have already fixed this bug during enablement and also fixed in quantal (bug 1018262), need David to check why it's not working now.

There is some confusion here that needs to be sorted out first.

1) Some machines (only from Asus AFAIK) have a single 3-pin jack, that can accept either a headphone or a mic, but not a 4-pin headset. When plugged in, you need to manually select headphone or mic in order to be able to use it. This is what the codec proc file tells me that this is, and this also is what the bug Anthony points at concerns. I wouldn't give my word that it was fixed in quantal, because nobody came back to me and confirmed that it actually worked in the distro, and also, this fix has not been completely backported to precise (and I don't want to SRU that before someone tells me that what I've done in quantal actually works).

2) Many more machines have a single 4-pin jack where you can plug either a 3-pin headphone or a 4-pin headset, but not a 3-pin mic. This is what Jeff says that this machine is.

3) If you go to Asus' specifications of the X401U, ( https://www.asus.com/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/X401U/#specifications ), it says that there is one 3-pin headphone jack, one 3-pin microphone jack and one line-in jack. Just to add to the confusion.

In order to proceed I need from someone with the hardware to reconfirm what type of jack this really is.

Ok, I'm looking at the jack and I can't tell you... it's a 3.5mm jack with both mic and headphone icons separated by a /.

If I plug my 4 band headset in, I get sound through the headphones. but only the internal mic works.

Next, I used a splitter that converts a 4 band headset plug into a dual 3 band (PC) headset plugs providing one 3 band plug for earphones and one 3 band plug for mic.

If I plug the 3 band earphone plug in, I again get sound through the earphones. HOwever, if I plug in the 3 band mic plug, I still get nothing, only the internal Mic works.

This headset has worked perfect on all systems with combo jacks, and works perfectly on every other system I've tried with dual jacks using the splitter described above.

Here's a picture of the jack

I also just tried the mic jack of a standard PC headset and that too failed to do anything.

In both cases, the Sound Settings tool showed headset as an Output option but Internal Mic as the only input option.

This change was made by a bot.

Okay, so given the icon, that increases the likelyhood if this being an either/or jack, which is also what the kernel says. I e, it's a 3-pin only jack, but you can plug either a headphone or a mic, but not the headset combo.

As Anthony says, we probably have better support for this in Quantal. This is how it's supposed to work in Quantal:

When you plug something in, both the "Mic" and the "Headphone" option appears in the sound settings. If you plugged in a headphone, you go to the output tab and select "Headphone", on the input tab select "Internal Mic".
If you plugged in a mic, you go to the output tab and select "Speakers", on the input tab select "Headphone Mic" (or possibly just "Microphone", don't remember).

If this is a cert blocker for 12.04; I need to SRU this functionality into 12.04. But I don't want to do that before I have got actual verification that the above is how it actually works in 12.10, and that it all works correctly. I can't do that, because I haven't got any hardware. Can you do it for me?

We don't. I've just installed Quantal on the box tried again. With nothing plugged in, launching the Sound Settings tool, Output shows two options, Internal and Headphones. Input shows only one, Internal Mic.

I plugged in a Mic, and nothing changed, I was not given an "External Mic" Option and the Headphones option remained for Output.

I then applied the latest Quantal updates, rebooted and tried again. Same thing.

Can you plug in the external mic (with quantal, latest updates), then attach the output of
 - pacmd list
 - alsa-info ( https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Audio/AlsaInfo )

Thanks!

pacmd output

alsa-info output

Argh, so it seems like the patch did not make it into quantal after all...only raring.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but would it be possible for you to test raring to see if things work better there (and if not, attach alsa-info and pacmd list output)?

Thanks.

Patch reference: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/commit/?id=7369a53ab5f606e87a3cd1cd4eebd40226bab090

I think this is working nowadays; we have plenty of Dell hardware that now works in similar ways (although not exactly the same).
And it seems difficult to find the hardware to verify, so I'm marking this as Fix Released. If you still find the bug with the Asus 1015 CX in the latest release of ubuntu, please reopen the bug.

I think this is working nowadays; we have plenty of Dell hardware that now works in similar ways (although not exactly the same).
And it seems difficult to find the hardware to verify, so I'm marking this as Fix Released. If you still find the bug with the Asus X401U in the latest release of ubuntu, please reopen the bug.