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I have an Acer Swift 3 SF314-56 with Ubuntu 19.10 installed (the card is a Realtek ALC256).

My microphone does not work. I've tried lot of thing such as put the line "options snd-hda-intel model=acer-headset-multi" at the botton of the file "/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf". I've also installed HDAJackRetask and connected pin 012 and 013 to internal mic and bot ovveride. I've set Mic_Boost on alsamixer equal to zero.

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Well, nothing worked. The mic is now not dectected at all. Could someone help me?

I missed an infornation. Ubuntu is installed in dual boot alongside windows 10 (which I use rarely). On windows the microphone is detected and works well.

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  • Ubuntu 19.10 is going to reach end of life on 17th July 2020. I would suggest to move to 20.04 LTS.
    – KK Patel
    Jul 13, 2020 at 17:40

6 Answers 6

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I have been struggling through this issue for months. Apparently this is a recognized issue with devices using the Realtek ALC256 card (which includes the Acer Swift 3). There is a long thread on something similar on bugzilla.

I finally stumbled across a workaround to enable use of headset mics here: acer swift 3: microphone not working with ubuntu 18.04, to add options snd-hda-intel model=dell-headset-multi to the alsa-base.conf. You can follow the steps mentioned there (I did however have to restart my computer as alsa force-reload did not do the trick for me). This worked for me on Acer Swift 3 and Ubuntu 20

Please note however, the onboard mic will still not work.

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EDIT: Kernels 5.14-rc5 onwards, 5.13.10 onwards, 5.10.58 onwards have the following fix already applied, enjoy :D

So! Just made my headset microphone work on my Acer SF314-56 on Ubuntu 21.04. Happy happy happy :)

Looks like when you are using SOF driver the options snd-hda-intel ... over at /etc/modprobe.d/* have no effect. Thus (from my understanding) why HDAJackRetask won't help.

Also! Checkout this out! As 5.14-rc1 there is no patch for our lovely SF314-56.. hmmm...

So based on these findings here is the fix...

For custom-kernel people that is easy: Just add the following line and compile.

SND_PCI_QUIRK(0x1025, 0x1300, "Acer SWIFT SF314-56", ALC256_FIXUP_ACER_MIC_NO_PRESENCE), over at struct snd_pci_quirk alc269_fixup_tbl[] at sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c. For the brave ones that don't know how-to compile a custom kernel but willing to here is a cool guide. If you are using secureboot then you gotta also sign it. If you are using ZFS then iirc you also need zfs-dkms.

For people who aren't willing to compile a custom-kernel nor have a time machine or just want to experiment fast on some other device

Then you gotta disable SOF and rollback to legacy driver in order to make options snd-hda-intel ... have effect, however! this results with disabling DMIC. So add options snd-intel-dspcfg dsp_driver=1 to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf.

Afterwards you gotta create a patch over at /lib/firmware/, lets name it alc256-sound-patch.fw. Based on this documentation and the observation over at /sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c that device Acer TravelMate B311R-3 has the patch we need we paste the following code. If you are using some other device this is a place for some experimentation.

[codec]
0x10ec0256 0x10251300 0

[subsystem_id]
0x10251430

Finally enable the patch by also adding options snd-hda-intel patch=alc256-sound-patch.fw to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf. Then restart.

If you want also add options snd-hda-codec dyndbg=+p in order to have some more info over at dmesg.

If anyone know how to use options snd-hda-intel with SOF please let us know how-to!

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  • @dotdeb pinging since we share the same problem
    – whatBro
    Jul 14, 2021 at 15:12
  • @jacques pinging since we share the same problem
    – whatBro
    Jul 14, 2021 at 15:12
  • @user2944562 pinging since we share the same problem
    – whatBro
    Jul 14, 2021 at 15:13
  • I thought that it would be cool to let you know that I found a fix for Ubuntu 21.04, since we all share the same problem as OP. I feel kinda jerk for pinging you like this but I think I did the right decision to do so.
    – whatBro
    Jul 14, 2021 at 15:16
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I am having exactly the same issue. The problem seems to be that the built-in microphones are not part of the Intel HDA, but are connected to another codec. Forcing Linux to enable the (unconnected) microphone input will only result in some hum / system noise. I found more information here:

Built-in mic recognized but not working (Mint 19.2 64 bit) - Linux Mint Forums

However, don't get your hopes up; as far as I could find, it has not been fixed yet.

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new alsamixer display for acer swift3 SF314-56 (Kubuntu 20.04 LTS)

Same Acer swift3 SF314-56 running Kubuntu 19.10 mic didn't work neither. Then updated to kubuntu 20.04 LTS, and after a recent kernel update (I have now a kernel 5.4.0-52-generic), the internal mic started to work with an updated kde sound control applet. Actually that corresponds to a linux kernel switch to SOF (Sound Open Firmware) infrastructure for intel audio. The intel HDA (with underlying Realtek ACL256 for our Acer swift 3 SF314-56) works fine now with new HDMI ouptuts controls (tested on my TV), and 2 new controls for mics (internal digital mic and headphone mic). But I still have an issue for headphone mic. Here an extract of kernel boot that explains the new module mapping :

dmesg | grep snd
[    5.345758] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1f.3: DSP detected with PCI class/subclass/prog-if info 0x040100
[    5.345974] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1f.3: Digital mics found on Skylake+ platform, using SOF driver
[    5.873767] snd_hda_codec_realtek ehdaudio0D0: autoconfig for ALC256: line_outs=1 (0x14/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0) type:speaker
[    5.873768] snd_hda_codec_realtek ehdaudio0D0:    speaker_outs=0 (0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)
[    5.873769] snd_hda_codec_realtek ehdaudio0D0:    hp_outs=1 (0x21/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)
[    5.873770] snd_hda_codec_realtek ehdaudio0D0:    mono: mono_out=0x0
[    5.873770] snd_hda_codec_realtek ehdaudio0D0:    inputs:
[    6.136530] snd_hda_codec_realtek ehdaudio0D0: ASoC: sink widget AIF1TX overwritten
[    6.136534] snd_hda_codec_realtek ehdaudio0D0: ASoC: source widget AIF1RX overwritten
[    6.136629] skl_hda_dsp_generic skl_hda_dsp_generic: snd-soc-dummy-dai <-> DMIC48kHz 6 mapping ok
[    6.136644] skl_hda_dsp_generic skl_hda_dsp_generic: snd-soc-dummy-dai <-> DMIC16kHz 7 mapping ok
[    6.136665] skl_hda_dsp_generic skl_hda_dsp_generic: snd-soc-dummy-dai <-> HDA Analog 0 mapping ok
[    6.136684] skl_hda_dsp_generic skl_hda_dsp_generic: snd-soc-dummy-dai <-> HDA Digital 1 mapping ok
[    6.136701] skl_hda_dsp_generic skl_hda_dsp_generic: snd-soc-dummy-dai <-> HDMI1 3 mapping ok
[    6.136714] skl_hda_dsp_generic skl_hda_dsp_generic: snd-soc-dummy-dai <-> HDMI2 4 mapping ok
[    6.136729] skl_hda_dsp_generic skl_hda_dsp_generic: snd-soc-dummy-dai <-> HDMI3 5 mapping ok

The linux kernel bug resolution history for DMIC on intel HDA is there : https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201251#c116

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  • edited with some technical clues
    – jacques
    Oct 24, 2020 at 23:06
  • I can't tell exactly when Ubuntu made the update (probably a kernel backport, or sof firmware update), but pretty sure it is recent as some comment in history prove that other people requested an ubuntu 20.04 (like comment #185 or #191 in kernel bug history).
    – jacques
    Oct 24, 2020 at 23:30
  • this thread can also give you details about related needed audio package update (you will see several kernel test as well as ubuntu 20.04 tests) : forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=318670
    – jacques
    Oct 24, 2020 at 23:56
  • last comment, to see mic (captures page) you need to change display in alsamixer (so f4 or f5)
    – jacques
    Oct 25, 2020 at 0:15
  • there was a dkms packaging update for alsa sof-dvpt for kernel 5.4, 3 monthes ago, plus a quite recent linux firmware update (for sound as well), so I guess this is what activated the succesfull update of our acer swift 3 module in 20.04 kernel (see hui wang activity).
    – jacques
    Oct 25, 2020 at 0:22
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@pedro-siqueira's answer https://askubuntu.com/a/1307107/1133973 perfectly solves this issue without any further side effects On ALC255

Solution :

add

options snd-hda-intel model=alc255-acer,dell-headset-multi

to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

and reboot.

Should work smoothly.

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Check this solution out, on a similar question: https://askubuntu.com/a/1406919/1593265 There is a video tutorial included in it too if you want to see the whole process and results beforehand.

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