Ubuntu Wiki

Summary

I've set up this page to summarize problems and known workarounds for people having trouble using snd-hda-intel as driver for their sound chipsets. Multimedia related features of working sound input and output are absolutely crucial today. I hope this helps to improve the driver for the affected machines. Most of Intel compatible machines shipped this days - especially laptops - need this module for the sound, but there seems to be a lot of problems with it too.

Main issues

I found problems to belong to three main groups:

• Chipsets that do not work at all out-of-the box. They usually require the model kernel parameter to be specified manually in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base. The list of known models can be found in the kernel source in the file Documentation/alsa/ALSA-Configuration.txt under the section for the model (currently around line 758). Several chipsets which work (or work partially) are not listed here.

• Laptop models whose internal microphone does not work.
• Models whose external microphone port does not work. Some produce just silence, some hang the recording application, some produce utterly jerky sound.

How to report?

First check your lsmod and lspci output. The first must show snd_hda_intel as being used. The second must show something similar to Audio device: Intel Corporation HD Audio Controller. These chips are not all the same! Issue

cat /proc/asound/card*/codec\#*|grep -i codec

from the command line to see which one do you have. First check now whether you sound input works. Then check - if you have one - your built-in microphone and then your external microphone. For this you can utilize krec or a Skype test call. Usually you have to tune the mixer settings first. The microphone must be selected as the input device and its sound volume must be turned on, not muted. Sometimes the external and internal microphone is transposed in the mixer. Try to play around, and make sure that the problem is not on your side (e.g. the microphone you are using really works fine). If everything works, you are lucky .

If you experience some problems, please do not report it here. This page is only for summarizing the problems. Report directly to Launchpad and the ALSA bug-tracker. First check if your chipset/codec is not already reported as being problematic. If so, try to add your report there.

Now get this script. If you run it, it fetches all the relevant information on your sound architecture, it can also post it to a public database. You can refer to this in a bugreport so developers can more easily see which card/system you are using. It does not post any personal information.

Now also try workarounds relevant to your card and please report your results.

Workarounds

• Try to explicitly specify your model as module parameter.
• Try to lower the recording volume.
• Try to reload you kernel module:

/etc/init.d/alsa-utils stop
rmmod snd_hda_intel
modprobe snd-hda-intel
/etc/init.d/alsa-utils start

• Try to select one of the channels of your card instead of the default ALSA capture as recording source.

Remarks

If you just see other bug descriptions with chips/codecs having problems feel free to list them here. Also feel free to extend this page for example to include similar driver issues related to different kernel modules.

Table of problems