On 2016-05-03 21:55, Carsten Mattner wrote:

This is a question for those who have or still are using a Thinkpad x220.

I've been trying to get an external 3.5mm headphone+mic combo to work in a way that the mic is picked up, but so far nothing fixed it and I cannot find anything relevant on the internet.

I've tried enable/disabling the mic i/o port in BIOS, but I'm fairly certain that the setting is just for the built-in mic under the monitor and not anything connected via the a combo inline external device.

Any hints what I can try?

I've tried with ALSA and ALSA plus PulseAudio and never been able to see any device that would pick up sound.

I don't recall this being an issue, I don't have the splitter on me but I can try for you when I get home later today. In the meanwhile, have you considered that maybe your combo headset (or whatever it is that you're using) is incompatible? When I plug something into the headphone port the X220 automagically switches over the output to be headphone only (and vice versa). Could you check that when you plug in your headset that the built in microphone stops picking up sound? -- Tomasz Kramkowski

On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 11:17 AM, Tomasz Kramkowski <tk@the-tk.com> wrote:

I don't recall this being an issue, I don't have the splitter on me but I can try for you when I get home later today. In the meanwhile, have you considered that maybe your combo headset (or whatever it is that you're using) is incompatible? When I plug something into the headphone port the X220 automagically switches over the output to be headphone only (and vice versa). Could you check that when you plug in your headset that the built in microphone stops picking up sound?

It's a Sennheiser OCX 686i. I don't know if it's in any way incompatible, and I cannot figure it out because I wasn't trained in EE and it's impossible to search for this on the web. I've used it with a phone before and the mic was working. I've also disabled the internal microphone in the BIOS. Right now I believe there's some software issue, and as I'm not using a ready-made KDE or GNOME distro, I cannot tell what is going wrong. None of the ALSA or PulseAudio controls seemed to make a difference. Plus the naming scheme in PulseAudio is not helpful at all but I've noticed that if I press the middle switch of the integrated 3-button controls, the device switches back and forth between two devices in pavucontrol.