[pulseaudio-discuss] Internal Mics and Speakers not visible in PulseAudio
David Henningsson
david.henningsson at canonical.com
Wed May 30 05:46:48 PDT 2012
Posted to both alsa-devel and pulseaudio-discuss lists, as this is a
cross issue.
PulseAudio tries to figure out what equipment is present on the machine
using the mixer. If it finds e g "Headphone Playback Volume", "Headphone
Playback Switch", or "Headphone Jack", it assumes that a headphone is
present and creates a headphone port. If it finds no ports, it creates a
fallback "Analog Output" port.
Now assume that we have a laptop with speakers and a headphone jack, but
with only a "Master Playback Volume", and a "Headphone Jack" for the
jack detection.
PulseAudio will take the "Headphone Jack", and create a headphone port.
Now, if this port is currently unconnected/unavailable, it will not show
up at all [1]. As a result, the internal speakers - for which no port
was created - will be essentially unusable.
Now, I thought this was a problem with a pair of machines only, that we
could easily quirk on the PulseAudio side. But after looking through
Ubuntu bugs and posting a blog post [2] about the issue, I have now
collected 21 different machines affected, mostly on the input side.
Several Realtek chips are affected on the dmic side, and some older
STAC92xx chips have problems in both directions.
So it becomes evident to me, that this is something that needs to be
fixed pretty fast.
So, to move forward, we need to expose these speakers and internal mics
to userspace. A very simple (untested) patch is attached. This would
make "Internal Mic Jack" and "Speaker Jack" show up. Note that the
actual status can be overridden/ignored on the PulseAudio side - the
importance here is the sign that there are internal mics and speakers,
so that the PulseAudio ports get created.
I could develop it a little to make sure we don't actually do any jack
detection for these pins but always return them as being true/present.
That is, if you approve the idea? I admit that the "Internal Mic Jack"
is somewhat misleading/hacky as the internal mic is not connected to any
physical jack, but it seems like the simplest way of resolving the
problem currently.
--
David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
https://launchpad.net/~diwic
[1] At least in Ubuntu's new Sound Settings UI.
[2]
http://voices.canonical.com/david.henningsson/2012/05/22/three-audio-bugs-in-12-04/
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