Trouble with mic audio via Soundblaster X4 sound card

[p3nnysaurus]

Hi everyone! I’m brand new to Endeavour OS and Arch in general, but I’ve had a Steam Deck for about a year now, and I’ve been hopping distros on a little Thinkpad I have for some time now. I’m finally making the switch to ditch Windows.

I am writing this from a live installation USB, so that may be part of the problem, but I was doing a quick system check before moving on to make sure all my hardware was compatible. So far everything works, monitors, USB hubs and all!

However, while I get a TON of audio options with the my Soundblaster X4, and the audio works great, I can’t get any mic audio. For context, I have my mic (Antlion Mod Mic Uni) plugged into the microphone port on the front of the Sound Blaster X4, it’s a standard 3.5mm jack as far as I am aware. Same thing with my headset, which is plugged into the headphone port. I’ve attached a screenshot of all the audio preset options available to the sound card in the audio mixer.

Screenshot

I’ve been reading a bit online, and while I’m not sure what the culprit is, here are some common outputs I’ve seen people ask for when troubleshooting!

inxi -A output:

Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Navi 31 HDMI/DP Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
  Device-2: AMD Rembrandt Radeon High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
  Device-3: AMD Family 17h/19h HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
  Device-4: Creative Sound Blaster X4
    driver: cdc_acm,hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid type: USB
  Device-5: Logitech HD Webcam C525 driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo type: USB
  API: ALSA v: k6.6.1-arch1-1 status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 0.3.85 status: active

cat /proc/asound/cards output:

[liveuser@eos-2023.11.17 ~]$ cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [HDMI           ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI HDMI
                      HDA ATI HDMI at 0xfcb20000 irq 113
 1 [Generic        ]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
                      HD-Audio Generic at 0xfc988000 irq 114
 2 [Generic_1      ]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
                      HD-Audio Generic at 0xfc980000 irq 115
 3 [X4             ]: USB-Audio - Sound Blaster X4
                      Creative Technology Ltd Sound Blaster X4 at usb-0000:0e:00.0-5, high speed
 4 [C525           ]: USB-Audio - HD Webcam C525
                      HD Webcam C525 at usb-0000:13:00.3-2.1, high speed

arecord -l output:

[liveuser@eos-2023.11.17 ~]$ arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 2: Generic_1 [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: ALC897 Analog [ALC897 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: Generic_1 [HD-Audio Generic], device 2: ALC897 Alt Analog [ALC897 Alt Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 3: X4 [Sound Blaster X4], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 4: C525 [HD Webcam C525], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

I’ll also add that I’ve read a few times that this could be solved by…
a. Unlocking the mic’s audio channels in Pulse Audio and turning the Front Right channel to 0.
b. Using alsamixer in the terminal and using F6 to switch cards.

Unfortunately, the first option did nothing for me, and as far as the second one goes, I was unable to see any other cards other than PipeWire, which I assume is the default. I attached a screenshot of what that looked like in the terminal, as well.

Screenshots

I’m not sure I can think of any other info that might be useful at this time, but I’d really like to get this resolved if possible! I’m very excited to make this switch, and I’d hate for it to be ruined just by my mic not working. I’m very grateful for any advice you all have! Thanks in advance!

[manuel]

Welcome to the forum!

Don’t really know but I assume this is their FAQ page:
https://antlionaudio.com/pages/faq

I looked at their troubleshoot and support pages. It seems no driver etc. is needed, so you might want to try different ports unless you did already. Also make sure signal strength is OK and mute is not enabled…

BTW, have you updated your motherboard BIOS to the latest?

[p3nnysaurus]

Last time I updates my motherboard was after the 7800x3d fiasco got resolved (I have an ASUS board and a 7800x3d that did not die thankfully), but I can check that again. I haven’t tried another microphone port, but I was just expecting it to work since I haven’t had any trouble with the Soundblaster in Windows and didn’t think it’d be that complicated.

Mute was not enabled on the mic or in the settings, and I had the volume all the way up, even boosted it to see if it just had really low output. I did read something about using the terminal to record a mic test and playback the audio, but when I did that it was completely silent!

Really bizarre stuff! But I’ll look into updating my BIOS for sure. Could it have anything to do with being on an installation USB rather than a full install? I grabbed the installation image a week or two ago, but I was thinking it could be out of date software, kernel, etc? I thought it was odd that only that default sound card shows up in the terminal when accessing alsamixer. Thought that might be due to not being a complete install.

If there’s any more info I can provide that would help, let me know! I’m totally lost haha

[manuel]

This is about all I can think of now, and I’m no expert on this area.

But maybe others here more familiar with this stuff could help?

[p3nnysaurus]

Thanks for taking the time to share what you know!