Microphone not detected by chromium

[graeme_moss]

I have the following:

Computer: Toshiba NB510
Puppy Linux: BionicPup32 19.03
Chromium: Version 80.0.3987.149 (Developer Build) Puppy Linux Run-As-Spot (32-bit)

This is a fresh install of the latest puppy linux and the latest chromium, though I have also had the same microphone issue with an earlier version of chromium I tried earlier.

The microphone works and can be used to record and playback sound, e.g. via (running either as root or spot):

arecord -vv -fdat test.wav
aplay test.wav

The first command reports:

Hardware PCM card 0 'HDA Intel' device 0 subdevice 0


However when I try to use the microphone in chromium then it cannot find the microphone.

For example, https://mictests.com/ reports "Could not find a microphone, however there are other media devices (like speakers or webcams). Most likely, this means that your microphone is not working properly or your browser cannot access it."

Also, on the Settings -> Advanced -> Privacy and Security -> Site Settings -> Microphone, then there is no microphone to select (and the button is on Ask before accessing, not Blocked). This is in contrast to the Webcam being shown in Site Settings -> Camera and working fine.


Anyone got any suggestions for diagnosing this issue? I'm not sure what the web browser is doing that is different to ALSA or the commands I gave above.

[ozsouth]

Welcome Graeme. I had this issue & needed pulseaudio installed. Puppy uses apulse to use alsa with a pulseaudio stub. Running browsers prepended with apulse often works (i.e. in a terminal run: apulse chromium). Failing that, you should be able to download (just) pulseaudio via package manager (I used v9).

[graeme_moss]

Great, that fixed it! Prepending with apulse did not work, but installing pulseaudio (I used v 11) worked fine!

Thanks very much, this had been bothering me for hours! Now my son can use Google hangouts with speech etc. at this time of doing school from home etc. He will be very pleased too.

[peebee]

Hi
Was your mic enabled in retrovol?
Right click on the retrovol icon in the systray and select Full Window

The mic should work in Chromium without having to install PulseAudio....

Cheers
PeeBee

[graeme_moss]

Yes, my mic was ticked in retrovol. The microphone worked "fine" (though poor quality) using arecord and aplay (see my first post). Only chromium seemed unable to see the microphone. Even firefox could see the microphone, though it remained very poor quality. Once I had it working in chromium after installing pulseaudio, the sound quality was much much better. Thanks peebee for all your work on chromium!

However, I now have a different problem. Something is resetting the volume for the speaker and headphone (seen in retrovol) without my control. My son is using the laptop, and he often comes to me telling me that the sound is off. Indeed I look at retrovol and both the headphone and speaker are off. I try to enable the headphone and something resets it. I plug in the headphones and it then works, so I presume it's the auto-mute that is resetting the volume or similar. However I don't see what would reset both headphone and speaker...

Do I need something like pulseaudio-equalizer?

[ozsouth]

In a terminal, run: alsamixer
& set levels (anything with MM is muted - toggle on with M key; up/down arrows adjust), then esc to exit.
Then run: alsactl store
Should retain settings.

[graeme_moss]

That seems to have worked, thanks!