The transition from ALSA to Pulse never really fully happened and a lot of backend stuff is still dependent on ALSA. If you ever find that you have an audio channel that is just not working for no apparent reason (like audio input), run alsamixer and check if the channel is muted there.
I’ve found this multiple times on new Ubuntu-derivative installs, and the channel muting in ALSA is not reflected anywhere in the desktop GUI audio settings and can’t be adjusted through them, but nothing is technically broken - you just have to raise the volume on that channel via alsamixer. It’s a very annoying gotcha.
The transition from ALSA to Pulse never really fully happened and a lot of backend stuff is still dependent on ALSA. If you ever find that you have an audio channel that is just not working for no apparent reason (like audio input), run
alsamixerand check if the channel is muted there.I’ve found this multiple times on new Ubuntu-derivative installs, and the channel muting in ALSA is not reflected anywhere in the desktop GUI audio settings and can’t be adjusted through them, but nothing is technically broken - you just have to raise the volume on that channel via alsamixer. It’s a very annoying gotcha.
God, the ALSA-PulseAudio Wars never fucking ended, and we’ve been stranded ever since. It’s the Wayland/X11 windowing struggle all over again!
“This package uses a legacy windowing system, and is insecure.” You know who else is insecure? The devs!
What we need is a new system