Macbook Air microphone not working

It's the same for the MacBook 4,1.
See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/289552

Can you post "lspci|grep Audio" to see if it's maybe the same chipset?

Regards,
beauman

Thanks, yes, same chipset:
~>lspci|grep Audio
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)

I marked the other bug as a duplicate of this one.

This bug is also valid for ubuntu 8.10 intrepid ibex

why is the priority "low"?! there are only three different kinds of mac laptops, and the laptops are the most commonly purchased macs there are, and since all these macs are the same, there is no excuse for something not working right in one of them. i think that any bugs on a mac should be a higher priority than bugs on any other computer, because macs arent like any other computer. there are only a handful of mac types, and all of them use very similar hardware. therefore, these bugs are extremely easy to reproduce. <rant rant rant...>

There are WAY more than 3 Intel Mac Portables (There are about 12 I
can count off the top of my head.) Additionally, There are FAR fewer
Macs when compared to other machines out there and honestly having the
mic not working is far less important than other issues that are
present. On top of all that, the priority on the Mactel-Support is
just assigned by that team and has nothing to do with the priority
that Ubuntu places on your bug. This bug is being worked. Please be
patient.

On Nov 15, 2008, at 10:34 PM, Jessie Lawrence <email address hidden>
wrote:

> why is the priority "low"?! there are only three different kinds of
> mac
> laptops, and the laptops are the most commonly purchased macs there
> are,
> and since all these macs are the same, there is no excuse for
> something
> not working right in one of them. i think that any bugs on a mac
> should
> be a higher priority than bugs on any other computer, because macs
> arent
> like any other computer. there are only a handful of mac types, and
> all
> of them use very similar hardware. therefore, these bugs are extremely
> easy to reproduce. <rant rant rant...>
>
> --
> ubuntu 8.04 Macbook Air Mic not working
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/268301
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mactel
> Support, which is the registrant for Mactel Support.
>
> Status in Mactel Support: New
> Status in Ubuntu: New
>
> Bug description:
>> From orinoco8 at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=914510:
>
> I have tried for some time, but my macbook air microphone is still
> not working. It's running Ubuntu 8.04 (up-to-date).
>
> Tried alsamixer and turned on all the input devices. Skype picks up
> nothing (tested through test call). "Sound Recorder" records nothing.
>
> Sound works fine.
>
>> From kosumi68:
>
> I can confirm that this problem has been present through all
> versions of 8.04, and it has not - to my knowledge - been fixed.
>
> There are several possible source of the error, so I am reluctant to
> guess on a particular package yet.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~mactel-support
> Post to : <email address hidden>
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~mactel-support
> More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp

The instructions I've placed at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook?#Microphone work for me on my MacBook 4,1 on Intrepid. Can others comment if those instructions work for them on their hardware? (Comment only if the hardware is not mentioned in a previous comment or if your experience differs from that of a previous comment to keep the bug comments tidy please).

So at least for the Macbook 4,1 it seems like it is just some default settings that need to be changed. I'm not sure what package/software is responsible for detecting and enabling the relevant settings changed in the wiki.

YES!!!

I confirm, it works.

In "Audiosettings", I also had to set the recording source to "HDA Intel ALC885 Analog (ALSA)" for Audioconferencing.

Can we please leave the summary of this bug as "Macbook and Macbook Air microphone not working" instead of "Macbook Air microphone not working"? This makes it clear this bug is covering both laptops as the dup on bug #289552 reflects.

Jason, as your own post suggests, the microphone on the Macbook DOES work. I think that is why it was changed. If you think that that bug was marked as a dup and it should not be, then you should remove the duplicate status. (and judging from the bug description at the top, and your proposed working fix, then it likely is not a duplicate.)

I started this confusion by actually marking the bugs as duplicate, and forgot about it when changing back the title. Even though the sound chip is the same, there are other important differences between the MB4 and the MBA. I will untie the bugs again, so we can mark one of them as solved.

I agree. I take it the procedure fails on the MBA then?

There is unfortunately no change for the MBA, even with the proposed instructions.

The duplicate has been unmarked and the title restored.

Congratulations to the MB4 users :-)

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage . I have classified this bug as a bug in ALSA-DRIVER.
For future reference you might be interested to know that a lot of applications have bug reporting functionality built in to them. This can be accessed via the Report a Problem option in the Help menu for the application with which you are having an issue. You can learn more about this feature at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

6 months later and the bug is still being "worked." The MacBook Air I am currently using is from early 2008. Compiz is not working, the recording half of my sound card is dead, and people say Linux hardware support is good? It is acceptable at best. With almost every laptop I have used, there has been some kind of issue with sound recording, and it's always with an Intel HDA card, and nothing is ever done to fix it. If I knew a little more about debugging ALSA drivers, I'd fix this myself. The only work I ever did on a kernel module was a memory allocation patch for a wireless card, though.

Thor, just a suggestion, since this is indicated to be a problem with alsa, maybe you should file a bug there?

If you are using jaunty or newer, please run "apport-collect -p alsa-base 268301"

Thanks

Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 UTENTE PID ACCESSO COMANDO
 /dev/snd/controlC0: chico 3730 F.... mixer_applet2
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0x90500000 irq 20'
   Mixer name : 'Realtek ALC889A'
   Components : 'HDA:10ec0885,106b3400,00100103'
   Controls : 30
   Simple ctrls : 18
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
Package: alsa-base 1.0.18.dfsg-1ubuntu8
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=it_CH.UTF-8
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-13-generic x86_64
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

Architecture: i386
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: thor 3410 F.... mixer_applet2
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0x90500000 irq 20'
   Mixer name : 'Realtek ALC889A'
   Components : 'HDA:10ec0885,106b3400,00100103'
   Controls : 30
   Simple ctrls : 18
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: alsa-base 1.0.18.dfsg-1ubuntu8
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

It should be noted that I am passing model=mbp3 to the module for sound to work at all.

I don't think that option is applicable to any generation of MacBook Air.

Well, I'm afraid sound doesn't work at all without it.

Architecture: i386
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: tdurra 4008 F.... mixer_applet2
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0x90500000 irq 20'
   Mixer name : 'Realtek ALC889A'
   Components : 'HDA:10ec0885,106b3400,00100103'
   Controls : 30
   Simple ctrls : 18
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
Package: alsa-base 1.0.18.dfsg-1ubuntu8
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 SHELL=/usr/bin/tcsh
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-14-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin audio cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev pulse pulse-access pulse-rt sambashare

Anything else we can do or provide to get this issue moving for MacBook Air users now that Karmic is out? Still no support there.

Hi rydberg,

This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p alsa-base 268301

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

    [This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

This is still an issue in Lucid beta as of this posting in MacbookAir 1,1 Sound works by passing model=mbp3, but nothing as of yet fixes the mic not working.

yareckon, can you reproduce the symptom using linux-alsa-driver-modules-$(uname -r) from ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev? Please try with and without model quirk.

Hmm... still don't seem to be getting any sound on the mic, which is the longstanding problem However, sound on the macbook air (the other bug that has glommed onto this thread) seems now to work without the model=mbp3 workaround. Dunno if other folks can confirm that.

Is there anything else I should do on the mic front to gather more info?

yareckon, please file a separate bug using ubuntu-bug alsa-base so that we can collect your hw info separately from this bug report.

It appears a patch similar to our problem is getting pretty close to inclusion in the alsa-driver: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24/+bug/278648. The link is about a lenovo machine, but the sound chip and the issue is the same. Looking at the patch might give ideas - hey, it might even work. Unfortunately my internal speaker broke down recently due to a bad audio cable (known problem), so I cannot investigate this further myself.

Not really, the problem is the same insomuch that the routing is busted "by default", but the codec/chip is a different one (Realtek for the Macbook Air, and Conexant for the Lenovo).

Hi Everyone !!

the post is two years old !!!!! I just got a stupid Macbook air ...
I know it is a silly idea ;;; but anyways ;;; what information do we need to make the stupid microphone working on ubuntu 10 something

is there anyone working on fixing the bug ? who can we contact to help us ????

don't tell me I will have to give up Ubuntu ???????
please !!!!!!!!!

thank you very much , I wish you a great new year;;;

May the microphone work on 2011, It would be amazing

Alberto

Hello guys,
any progress on mic issue for mba1,1?

note i posted this also at bugzilla https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52221

it is fairly documented, and also a quite old one

Bug still present in 14.04 and 15.04 on the Macbook 1,1. This is real pain as everything else works great and I only have 1 USB thanks to Apple "coolness"! Has anyone fixed this or found a successful workaround in the last 8 years? Thanks.

The list of recording devices will appear. Make sure that the “Internal Microphone” is selected. Try speaking into your microphone, and look for blue bars moving beside Input Level while you talk (see screenshot).
http://www.ipadsupportnumber.com/blog/fix-apple-application-support-error-2/