Hello, this is my first time here, so hello everyone! I have terrible problems with setting up my aunt's laptop. She's 67 and I've installed here elementary OS. It works OK, but there is one minor problem which I'm trying to solve every time we're visiting her. There is something wrong with microphone and/or sound. Temporary solution was to completely remove pulseaudio. Without pulseaudio everything works fine, but sound and microphone are rather quiet (and no devices are detected in sound config, so I cannot configure volume at all). After installing pulseaudio sound is ok, and I can control volume, but recorded sound are terrible. Cracky, noisy, almost nothing can be understood. I've tried various solutions, mostly related to editing various options in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf example: options snd-hda-intel model=acer position_fix=2 (also tried 1 and 3, model auto) Oh, right, machine. Its Acer Extensa 5220 with HDA Intel soundcard with ALC268 realtek chipset. I also kept installing/reinstalling pavucontrol, tried something in /etc/pulse/default.pa (but nothing serious). I'm loosing track of what I've tried, and I'm feeling like I'm going in circles. I don't want to have to install anything else. This is amazing OS, and perfect for her She hates learning new systems, here she has everything - skype and mail . Is there any chance to solve this problem?
I tried adjusting various settings with alsamixer, but no luck. Funny thing is that it worked in previous release. But I don't remember if I changed anything back then.
Try look at: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto and the latest driver: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto#Update_to_the_Latest_Version_of_ALSA
First of all it says on both pages, that this info is outdated. Is it a good idea to follow them? Second thing. Noticed in alsamixer that internal mic boost at 0 gives best result. Setting it to 100 causes the problem. But then recorded voice is too silent, and she has hearing problems. Not for her.
You properly right, I found this instead - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Audio/UpgradingAlsa/DKMS regarding updating the alsa driver.