Hello all- I am seeking help trying to figure out why my internal microphone isn't being detected. I have followed a lot of troubleshooting audio guides such as this one and none of it has worked.
I'm on Pop_OS, with wayland, on an Asus laptop,
Here is more info if anyone could by chance help me
arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC294 Analog [ALC294 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
systemctl --user status pipewire
● pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimedia Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Thu 2025-07-03 15:19:48 EDT; 24h ago
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire.socket
Main PID: 2192 (pipewire)
Tasks: 3 (limit: 18486)
Memory: 16.4M
CPU: 15.088s
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pipewire.service
└─2192 /usr/bin/pipewire
Jul 03 15:19:48 pop-os systemd[2182]: Started PipeWire Multimedia Service.
Jul 03 15:19:48 pop-os pipewire[2192]: mod.jackdbus-detect: Failed to receive jackdbus reply:>
lines 1-13/13 (END)
some more info: https://pastebin.com/embed_js/6vR5ZEXw
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I am new to linux so please don't make fun of me too much if what i'm sharing doesn't make any sense!!
It is probably due to this change in the Linux kernel. That broke analogue microphone inputs on lots of systems. After that change, there were quite a few additional patches fixing those problems on individual systems (e.g. this one), but there are still lots of broken setups around. I have no idea what the original change was about exactly. It appears to have broken more things than it has fixed, but what do I know.
even with an internal microphone?
Yes. Apparently the issue happens with both internal mics and mic connectors where you attach your own mic. The seconds link I provided points to a fix for a specific laptop that fixes a non-working internal mic.
sorry if this is dumb but i can't see where on that second link it gives a fix?
No, it is not dumb. My second link was just an example to a fix of one particular laptop where this issue occurred. I mentioned all this just to point to the issue that might be causing your problem. I'm afraid this probably does not fix it for you. Maybe it has been fixed with a more recent kernel. You could check which version you are running (by running
uname -afrom a terminal) and maybe update to a newer one if your distro allows that. Alternatively you could downgrade the kernel to a version before this issue was introduced (a 6.10 kernel should work okay). Of course downgrading should only be a stop-gap solution.