having problems with microphone on Ideapad G560

[Cphus]

I also have problems with the microphone on the Ideapad G560 under Linux.

First, I installed Ubuntu 10.10 and after that OpenSuse (don't remember the version) but in both distributions neither wireless nor microphone was working. then I found a list with distros that have support for Broadcom 802.11 wireless cards (which is of course my case) and I installed Linux Mint. But the microphone problem still persists.

I tryed Pulseaudio with ALSA and also Esound with ALSA but without succes. Sound was working well(excepting some minor issues which i managed to solve) but not the microphone. I also tried OSS4 but with that, neither the sound was working...

I think linux should solve this sound problem. It's very frustrating. I like Linux. I like the structure, it's free, it's light, I find Mint being very elegant, has a lot of applications easier an faster to install than in Windows but ... this sound problem is dragging me back. I'd really like to completely move to Linux but i can't untill these problems are solved. And I'm sure it's not only me in the situation.

I really cant get one thing: if Linux has so many distributions and if once every 6 months or 1yr or 2yrs in some cases a new version of a certain distribution is being released - this means there quite a lot people involved in improving Linux; and being so many they could easily in a year or two solve these problems forever(and other problems related to hardware incompatibilities).

[MikeTbob]

Hello and Welcome.
Most sound/mic problems can be fixed pretty easy. First thing to do it make sure it's not muted. Do you have alsamixer installed? If so, try launching that from the command line.

sudo alsamixer

After farting around there and you still have no mic then tell us about the mic, is it builtin or is it part of a PCI sound card? Post the output of this code please.

sudo lspci -knn

[gaseeley]

click on "system" - preferences - sound, click the input tab make sure "mute" next to the input bar is unchecked.
My microphone quit working out of the blue. Took me a while to find it.

[Cphus]

Hello,

Levels in sudo alsamixer were all at 100%
Also in System-Preferences-Sound the input volume is at 100% and it's not muted.

I have an internal microphone and a pair of headsets with a microphone so whenever i tried to record something to see if the mic works i tried to record with both of them, succesively.

Here is the output for

sudo lspci -knn

00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller [8086:0044] (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:391e]
	Kernel modules: intel-agp
00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port [8086:0045] (rev 02)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport
	Kernel modules: shpchp
00:16.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller [8086:3b64] (rev 06)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:38a5]
00:1a.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller [8086:3b3c] (rev 05)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:38aa]
	Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio [8086:3b56] (rev 05)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:38af]
	Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
	Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 [8086:3b42] (rev 05)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport
	Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 [8086:3b44] (rev 05)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport
	Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1c.2 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 [8086:3b46] (rev 05)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport
	Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1c.4 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 5 [8086:3b4a] (rev 05)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport
	Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller [8086:3b34] (rev 05)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:38b8]
	Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev a5)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller [8086:3b09] (rev 05)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:38be]
	Kernel modules: iTCO_wdt
00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 4 port SATA AHCI Controller [8086:3b29] (rev 05)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:38c1]
	Kernel driver in use: ahci
	Kernel modules: ahci
00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller [8086:3b30] (rev 05)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:38bf]
	Kernel modules: i2c-i801
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation GT218 [GeForce 310M] [10de:0a70] (rev a2)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:396d]
	Kernel driver in use: nvidia
	Kernel modules: nvidia-current, nouveau, nvidiafb
01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: nVidia Corporation High Definition Audio Controller [10de:0be3] (rev a1)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:396d]
	Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
	Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel
06:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4727] (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation Device [14e4:0510]
	Kernel driver in use: wl
	Kernel modules: wl
07:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [10ec:8136] (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:392e]
	Kernel driver in use: r8169
	Kernel modules: r8169
ff:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers [8086:2c62] (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:392b]
ff:00.1 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder [8086:2d01] (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:392b]
ff:02.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 [8086:2d10] (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:392b]
ff:02.1 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 [8086:2d11] (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:392b]
ff:02.2 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved [8086:2d12] (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:392b]
ff:02.3 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved [8086:2d13] (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:392b]

[Cphus]

I just realised that when I made the test with the analog microphone from the headphones, it was physically muted(it has a switch on the wire which is very uncommon, and the headsets are new so I didn't know untill now; sorry ) so I should correct my previous statementlike this: only the internal mic is not working.

Well, I think I can make the move to linux now.
Still, it'd be nice if the internal one would work.


Oh, by the way: does anybody know how do i put the default pulseaudio volume control back on the panel?
When i installed esound it disappeared and when i reinstalled pulseaudio the icon did not reappeared. I use KMix tray now but it's not that confortable..

[Cphus]

I think i know the source of the problem.

In the meantime i had another troubles. Suddenly, my desktop wouldn't appear after login screen. I've searched the net(more headaches with linux) but I couldn't find a solution. So, I reinstalled Mint. The first thing i did after installing was to test the micophones. Both the internal and the external one worked fine.
But i had the classical "sound coming from speakers even while headphones are conected" problem and i had to solve that.
I edited /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf by adding

options snd-hda-intel model=ideapad

at the end of the file.

After doing so, the speakers-headphones issue was solved but the internal mic was not working anymore.

Now, it seems that I tracked the cause of the problem.
But does anyone have any clues about why this happens?

[Cphus]

After a few months of using only Windows7 I also installed Mint 11 Gnome on my laptop. And, as an end to this..useless topic, I should state that Lenovo G560a works perfectly with Linux Mint 11.
No sound issues, wireless natively works(no alternate drivers needed etc.), in-built camera also works. Also the sound volume and screen brightness keys work as they should.