Re: Microphone not working on Gen8 ThinkPad X1 Carbon

[Ax0n]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 4:17 AM Alexandre Ratchov  wrote:

> in short, on these machines, the microphone is not connected to the HD
> audio codec (exposed by the azalia driver), but to another "intel
> smart sound technology" chip for which OpenBSD has no driver.
>
> If gen8 are the same, until this get fixed, I'd suggest using a
> *full-duplex* USB audio headset for audio-conferencing.
>

Thanks for the hints, Alexandre. Your TRRS comment in particular got my
creative juices flowing.

I have a ham radio handheld microphone with a TRRS plug on it, and while
it's wired COMPLETELY wrong for a TRRS headset, plugging it in and yelling
into the speaker while recording with Audacity shows audio levels on the VU
meter, and I can play it back properly. This tells me the Gen8 Thinkpads
have a TRRS jack and that the azalia(5) driver microphone input is using
the back-most contact as microphone input regardless if a device is plugged
in (hence the very low level of static-looking movement on the VU meters in
Audacity when trying to record earlier). I am positive I can just go get a
cheap TRRS headset and I should be good to go.

I do also have a broken-in-two Turtle Beach gaming headset my wife used to
use, with a USB sound device built-in. Plugging that in and frobbing
sndiod's flags per the Multimedia FAQ, I was also able to record audio from
snd/1 handily, so I now have two quite reasonable options for all my
streaming/recording/conferencing needs. I'd love to help test patches for
the integrated mic should someone attempt to tackle it. I'm not much of a
software developer, though, and don't have much to add aside from testing.

Ty,
--ax0n

Re: Microphone not working on Gen8 ThinkPad X1 Carbon

[Alexandre Ratchov]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2021 at 11:58:15AM -0500, Ax0n wrote:
> I initially noticed it when I hopped in a video room on Discord in Firefox
> and folks could see me and I could hear them, but Discord got no audio. It
> turns out, nothing gets any audio. sysctl has audio and video recording
> enabled, and pledge/unveil has been tweaked just a little for firefox to
> pick up the webcam.
> 
> aucat isn't picking up any audio. playing back the WAV I recorded with
> aucat or audacity is just silence. Audacity visibly shows very very low
> audio levels in the "monitor" VU meter when recording, but no amount of
> tinkering with mixerctl, audioctl, or sndioctl seems to make a difference
> in the recorded audio -- it's just silent. Audio output is good (videos on
> youtube for example) and aucat can play other WAV files just fine. I use
> the pianobar package daily to stream Pandora while I work.
> 
> I switched over to the latest snapshot and upgraded packages last night,
> and there's no change.
> 

Hi,

There's a thread about gen7 X1's, here:

https://marc.info/?t=16070737021&r=1&w=2

in short, on these machines, the microphone is not connected to the HD
audio codec (exposed by the azalia driver), but to another "intel
smart sound technology" chip for which OpenBSD has no driver.

If gen8 are the same, until this get fixed, I'd suggest using a
*full-duplex* USB audio headset for audio-conferencing.

There are also cheap -- but good quality, imho -- USB dongles with a
tiny sound card with a TRRS jack that allow most phone headsets to be
used on OpenBSD.

HTH,

-- Alexandre

Re: Microphone not working on Gen8 ThinkPad X1 Carbon

[Ashton Fagg]

Ax0n  writes:

> I initially noticed it when I hopped in a video room on Discord in Firefox
> and folks could see me and I could hear them, but Discord got no audio. It
> turns out, nothing gets any audio. sysctl has audio and video recording
> enabled, and pledge/unveil has been tweaked just a little for firefox to
> pick up the webcam.
>
> aucat isn't picking up any audio. playing back the WAV I recorded with
> aucat or audacity is just silence. Audacity visibly shows very very low
> audio levels in the "monitor" VU meter when recording, but no amount of
> tinkering with mixerctl, audioctl, or sndioctl seems to make a difference
> in the recorded audio -- it's just silent. Audio output is good (videos on
> youtube for example) and aucat can play other WAV files just fine. I use
> the pianobar package daily to stream Pandora while I work.
>
> I switched over to the latest snapshot and upgraded packages last night,
> and there's no change.

There are a number of newer Thinkpads this applies to (my T14s is the
same). it is because the microphones are connected differently to
previous machines and as such they would require different drivers which
do not exist on OpenBSD.

It's my understanding that even on some Linux distributions you will
find that they are not supported.

Microphone not working on Gen8 ThinkPad X1 Carbon

[Ax0n]

I initially noticed it when I hopped in a video room on Discord in Firefox
and folks could see me and I could hear them, but Discord got no audio. It
turns out, nothing gets any audio. sysctl has audio and video recording
enabled, and pledge/unveil has been tweaked just a little for firefox to
pick up the webcam.

aucat isn't picking up any audio. playing back the WAV I recorded with
aucat or audacity is just silence. Audacity visibly shows very very low
audio levels in the "monitor" VU meter when recording, but no amount of
tinkering with mixerctl, audioctl, or sndioctl seems to make a difference
in the recorded audio -- it's just silent. Audio output is good (videos on
youtube for example) and aucat can play other WAV files just fine. I use
the pianobar package daily to stream Pandora while I work.

I switched over to the latest snapshot and upgraded packages last night,
and there's no change.

Relevant output follows:

OpenBSD 6.9-beta (GENERIC.MP) #431: Sat Mar 27 01:45:57 MDT 2021
dera...@amd64.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/GENERIC.MP
real mem = 16774819840 (15997MB)
avail mem = 16251035648 (15498MB)
random: good seed from bootblocks
mpath0 at root
scsibus0 at mpath0: 256 targets
mainbus0 at root
bios0 at mainbus0: SMBIOS rev. 3.2 @ 0x6cbac000 (70 entries)
bios0: vendor LENOVO version "N2WET26W (1.16 )" date 01/21/2021
bios0: LENOVO 20U9S1QP00
acpi0 at bios0: ACPI 6.1
acpi0: sleep states S0 S3 S4 S5
acpi0: tables DSDT FACP SSDT SSDT SSDT SSDT SSDT TPM2 SSDT HPET APIC MCFG
ECDT SSDT SSDT SSDT NHLT BOOT SSDT LPIT WSMT SSDT DBGP DBG2 MSDM BATB DMAR
ASF! UEFI FPDT
acpi0: wakeup devices GLAN(S4) XHC_(S3) XDCI(S4) HDAS(S4) RP01(S4) PXSX(S4)
RP02(S4) PXSX(S4) PXSX(S4) RP04(S4) PXSX(S4) RP05(S4) PXSX(S4) RP06(S4)
PXSX(S4) RP07(S4) [...]
acpitimer0 at acpi0: 3579545 Hz, 24 bits
acpihpet0 at acpi0: 2399 Hz
acpimadt0 at acpi0 addr 0xfee0: PC-AT compat
cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
cpu0: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10610U CPU @ 1.80GHz, 7903.91 MHz, 06-8e-0c
cpu0:
FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,SMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,SDBG,FMA3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,PCID,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,x2APIC,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,XSAVE,AVX,F16C,RDRAND,NXE,PAGE1GB,RDTSCP,LONG,LAHF,ABM,3DNOWP,PERF,ITSC,FSGSBASE,TSC_ADJUST,SGX,BMI1,AVX2,SMEP,BMI2,ERMS,INVPCID,MPX,RDSEED,ADX,SMAP,CLFLUSHOPT,PT,SRBDS_CTRL,MD_CLEAR,IBRS,IBPB,STIBP,L1DF,SSBD,SENSOR,ARAT,XSAVEOPT,XSAVEC,XGETBV1,XSAVES
cpu0: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu0: smt 0, core 0, package 0
mtrr: Pentium Pro MTRR support, 10 var ranges, 88 fixed ranges
cpu0: apic clock running at 24MHz
cpu0: mwait min=64, max=64, C-substates=0.2.1.2.4.1.1.1, IBE
cpu1 at mainbus0: apid 2 (application processor)
cpu1: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10610U CPU @ 1.80GHz, 1797.69 MHz, 06-8e-0c
cpu1:
FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,SMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,SDBG,FMA3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,PCID,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,x2APIC,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,XSAVE,AVX,F16C,RDRAND,NXE,PAGE1GB,RDTSCP,LONG,LAHF,ABM,3DNOWP,PERF,ITSC,FSGSBASE,TSC_ADJUST,SGX,BMI1,AVX2,SMEP,BMI2,ERMS,INVPCID,MPX,RDSEED,ADX,SMAP,CLFLUSHOPT,PT,SRBDS_CTRL,MD_CLEAR,IBRS,IBPB,STIBP,L1DF,SSBD,SENSOR,ARAT,XSAVEOPT,XSAVEC,XGETBV1,XSAVES
cpu1: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu1: smt 0, core 1, package 0
cpu2 at mainbus0: apid 4 (application processor)
cpu2: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10610U CPU @ 1.80GHz, 1795.82 MHz, 06-8e-0c
cpu2:
FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,SMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,SDBG,FMA3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,PCID,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,x2APIC,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,XSAVE,AVX,F16C,RDRAND,NXE,PAGE1GB,RDTSCP,LONG,LAHF,ABM,3DNOWP,PERF,ITSC,FSGSBASE,TSC_ADJUST,SGX,BMI1,AVX2,SMEP,BMI2,ERMS,INVPCID,MPX,RDSEED,ADX,SMAP,CLFLUSHOPT,PT,SRBDS_CTRL,MD_CLEAR,IBRS,IBPB,STIBP,L1DF,SSBD,SENSOR,ARAT,XSAVEOPT,XSAVEC,XGETBV1,XSAVES
cpu2: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu2: smt 0, core 2, package 0
cpu3 at mainbus0: apid 6 (application processor)
cpu3: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10610U CPU @ 1.80GHz, 1795.82 MHz, 06-8e-0c
cpu3:
FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,SMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,SDBG,FMA3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,PCID,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,x2APIC,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,XSAVE,AVX,F16C,RDRAND,NXE,PAGE1GB,RDTSCP,LONG,LAHF,ABM,3DNOWP,PERF,ITSC,FSGSBASE,TSC_ADJUST,SGX,BMI1,AVX2,SMEP,BMI2,ERMS,INVPCID,MPX,RDSEED,ADX,SMAP,CLFLUSHOPT,PT,SRBDS_CTRL,MD_CLEAR,IBRS,IBPB,STIBP,L1DF,SSBD,SENSOR,ARAT,XSAVEOPT,XSAVEC,XGETBV1,XSAVES
cpu3: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu3: smt 0, core 3, package 0
cpu4 at mainbus0: apid 1 (application processor)
cpu4: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10610U CPU @ 1.80GHz, 1795.82 MHz, 06-8e-0c
cpu4:
FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,API