No audio input (mic) or output (speaker) detected

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1

Experience level:
So brand new to NixOS. Never dealt with the package manager before and I really dual booted it on my friend’s word. Feel free to ELI5

Context:
I didn’t have too many issues getting set up (some beginner mess ups but we handled those). I got my configuration.nix set up without too much difficulty.

Everything is honestly working pretty damn smoothly now. I quite like it, to be honest. One big issue. I can’t play video with sound. Or do anything with sound. Nor is my mic input detected.

Attempted solutions:

I attempted both PulseAudio and Pipewire in an effort to hear Michael Reeves’ voice, so first I googled then I binged then I yahoo’d and I:

  1. Checked for Multiple PulseAudio Instances: Attempted to kill any existing PulseAudio processes that might have been running.

There were not multiple instances running

  1. Verbose Logging: Ran PulseAudio in verbose mode to get more detailed error messages during startup.

It returned nothing.

  1. Permissions: Checked if running PulseAudio with elevated privileges resolved the issue. (Figured this isn’t it, since sudo is generally discouraged with PulseAudio)

Said it wasn’t for system-wide perms.

  1. Configuration Files: Reviewed PulseAudio’s configuration files for any errors or misconfigurations.

Weren’t any as far as I could tell. Please do let me know if it’s as simple as that, I’d be so grateful.

  1. Reinstallation of PulseAudio: Considered reinstalling PulseAudio to ensure a clean state.

It looked like it did something. Didn’t affect anything the situation though.

  1. Checking System Logs: Inspected system logs for any relevant error messages or warnings.

I didn’t really get anywhere with this, but I can rerun any log based commands if necessary for you guys. I’ve never worked with either PulseAudio or Pipewire before so my troubleshooting skills with those tools are limited.

  1. Manual Start of PulseAudio: Tried manually starting PulseAudio with the -D flag to force daemonization.

Said the same thing every time. “Daemon startup failed”.

  1. Checking for Conflicting Services: Ensured there were no conflicting audio services running that could interfere with PulseAudio.

There weren’t really, but I’m willing to run this again for a screenshot if necessary.

I also worked with Pipewire. For Pipewire:

When I run the following:

systemctl status --user pipewire

I get “enabled” as a result. BUT it says “mod.jackdbus-detect: Failed to receive jackdbus reply: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.jackaudio.service was not provided by any .service files”

Same for when it’s pipewire.socket or pipewire-pulse.socket(? I think that’s what it was).

From what I understood, it seems that it’s an issue with that jack.enable = true; line, but I faced issues regardless of whether it was enabled or disabled.

I also ran a few scanning commands (pactl list short sinks) and half of what was found returned “Failure : No such entity” and the other half gave no output.

I found no guidance on the mic/input side of things.

Hardware:

So I’m on an LG Gram with 32 gb RAM, 2tb SSD (each OS has 1tb dedicated to it) with an Intel i7 chip.

I’m just looking for some guidance because I’m really lost. Thank you for your time.

1 Like
2

Here are some more steps I went through in an effort to troubleshoot.

I’ve also installed alsa-firmware and included “unload-module module-suspend-on-idle”. Nothing has worked thus far.

I’m a bit lost on what to do next. If there is more information you need or any specific output you’d like to look at, please feel free to ask.

Thank you.

3

So I ended up reinstalling NixOS just to double-check if it was an installation thing.

That did nothing. At some point, it randomly decided to start recognizing the I/O, but the speakers still didn’t work.

And then like 2 minutes ago, they started working. But… issue solved :+1:

4

I have the same problem, I check the inputs and outputs using the command wpctl staus, that displayed only one dummy output. I tried checking the service just like you did and I have the same message displayed

mod.jackdbus-detect: Failed to receive jackdbus reply: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.jackaudio.service was not provided by any .service files

Absolutely stumped.

5

So I was trying to install hyprland. I gave my user “input” perms and the audio started working.

After a while, the audio stopped when I rebooted it (6/7 times later. I reboot a lot.)

I changed nothing about the user perms. The settings didn’t change, nor did the manner in which my pipewire was configured.

Further, Hyprland isn’t installing. When I run the necessary commands and install the recommended packages (from Vimjoyer’s video, without Home Manager), it recognizes it in the login screen but essentially loops me back to login when I do. There was one time when it took me beyond login screen to a black screen with a blinking cursor I could not interact with in any way.

Seems that was an issue with DRM (Direct Rendering Manager, from what I gather). I’m pretty sure this is a hardware thing. LG Gram might not be too friendly with NixOS.

I had a friend run my configuration.nix file on her system and she had no issue with sound. I’d recommend trying the “input” perm thing and rebooting (or gnome-session-quit, if that’s what you’re using).

What hardware are you on?

6

I did not try the “input” permissions, what I did try, was changing to the unstable channel and updating the system. It just started working then !. I spent a whole load of time tweaking my config files, checking the systemd services like you did hoping I could find the culprit for this.

I added the “input” perms just now to be sure that it won’t happen again. Thanks a lot for the reply !.