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!!
What's the exact model number of this Asus laptop?
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. ASUSLaptop_Q530VJ
I'm trying to see if maybe i've done something where I have pipewire, pulseaudio, wireplumber all set up at the same time? I also don't really understand the difference between them
Okay, so this is one of Asus's consumer models that fits in the "Windowstop" category, meaning a lot of the hardware is going to be windows-only for various reasons.
It's got an ALC272 which IS supported, but that doesn't mean the microphone will be, especially if it's on the USB bus for whatever reason.
Couple questions:
As a test, install
pavucontrolandqasmixer. Open pavucontrol, and check ALL the input settings (there are many combos). If nothing there shows activity, launch qasmixer, select the 'hw' view on the right, then try selecting different mixers and see if one finally clicks.If any of these are successful, your mic is detected, and your mixer settings are messed up so it's not being enabled as an input sink.
If none of these work, you're going to have to dig restart, then run
sudo dmesgand grep through looking for information regarding audio devices, or similar errors to see if it can't detect it.From the product specs, it looks like it might have Harmon Kardon speakers, which may also tie into the microphone, and that's going to be problematic if it's a USB device for a number of reasons I won't dive into. Overall, this model just seems to be problematic from digging around. Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/ASUS/comments/160d3wj/asus_creator_laptop_q530v_constant_problems/
The thing that's weird is that my mic used to work just fine!
Then I would try the above and make sure you don't have a mixer confused somewhere.
the internal mic used to work but then I had to do some update and now its not.
Is there a chance that there is some config file that is blocking something? like i made some kind of setting in a config file that is making this happen?
Config wouldn't BLOCK it from being detected, that's the problem.
Have you checked for a BIOS update recently?