hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1980.txt

Episode: 1980
Title: HPR1980: Fixing An Audio Problem while having a rant
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1980/hpr1980.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 12:46:34

---

This is HPR episode 180 entitled Fixing an Audio Problem while having a rant.
It is hosted by MrX and in about 10 minutes long.
The summary is describing how I solved an audio problem while having a rant about automation
limiting or removing C.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An honesthost.com.
Hello and welcome Hacker Public Radio audience.
My name is MrX and this is my 10th HPR podcast, not that I'm counting in their stand.
But I know it's been a while, but I thought I'd better do one for this year.
Of course on that topic I'd like to start by thanking the people at HPR for allowing this service to continue.
It really is quite unique and without it I would never have started into podcasting or creating one podcast.
It's just too much effort but this makes it really quite easy.
If HPR isn't the HPR produced one podcast a year with a more podcasting we know what to do with.
So anyway, getting onto the show.
I was preparing to do on HPR podcast and I had replaced my PC.
I was in your PC because I was having problems with finally the battery backup was failing on the PC.
It was that old I thought well I can't be bothered them fixing it.
So I just retired it basically and I got an old second hand X office.
Dale Optiplex 780 was very cheap.
Businesses through these things away all the time so I picked up a real bargain.
So initially on installing Audacity and trying it out it seemed to work fine.
I just briefly tried it.
But today when I tried to record I would receive it.
I couldn't pick up anything on the microphone at all.
I tried swapping microphones and I had to look in the standard Ubuntu settings.
It was saying something about a line input and I looked at the back of my computer
and realized that it's got one of these damn multi-purpose sockets.
It's got a green socket which is for the headphones.
And it's got a blue slash pink socket for either line in or record.
Now what's happened is the manufacturers decided they can save a bit money by only having two sockets in the back of it rather than three.
And then magically somehow I don't know if it's a BIOS or whatever it is.
Detects what hardware's connected and selects the appropriate thing.
Except in this case it detected my microphone as a line input device.
Now presumably it's measuring some sort of resistance and impedance on the device and you know that's a line input.
But completely hopeless.
I remember my father in law had a PC in here and windows many years ago and he came because of some more problem.
And the machine came with a driver problem to go with the sound card and it was supposed to auto detect it.
Whatever you plugged into it and it invariably got it wrong and went to plug it and plug it and plug it and plug it.
Eventually got it right and we just kind of left it. It's a flaming nuisance.
So many of these automatic things, there's don't flaming work right.
Don't get me started about things like that on your car.
Got automatic headlights that come on the moment you turn the keys.
Of course that's taking a load on the batteries which is difficult to start with thing.
And then I've got a thing, what else have I got?
I've got automatic wipers on the car which never quite get it right.
Sometimes they wipe too much and sometimes they wipe too little.
And what else have I got?
Oh yeah, of course you put the heater control on to the window and the air conditioning unit comes on which is nice.
It's supposed to demiss the window.
But then when you turn it off the window it leaves a damn thing on.
So where upon if it was manual I would turn it on occasionally when I chose to do so.
I've got to every single time turn a damn thing off.
So that's hopeless.
And also if you've got it on window demisting then if you happen to drive momentarily behind a smelly car
it's putting out a lot of fumes.
The recycle button doesn't work because this is all you're trying to clear the window.
You don't really want to push that button.
So there you go, rant over.
I hate automatic things.
I would rather have control myself.
I'm not thick.
I know how to do things myself.
Please don't choose for me.
Right, on with the show.
So how did I get around this problem?
Well I had a reluk on the intertubes and I came across a post.
Let me see if I can find it now.
It's a Tiger Workshop blog.
I'll put a link to it in the in the show notes.
And what they suggested was do sudo app get install?
No it wasn't, sorry it was.
sudo app get install ourself tools GUI.
And as part of the ourself tools GUI you get a tool called
hdijac retask.
hdijac retask.
Now I'll just.
hdi.
hdi.
Yes, I'll just.
hdijac retask.
So when you run that you get out a window opens and you've got various what they call
pin configurations which I would, I think they're talking about the sockets on your sound card.
On my particular sound card I've got a green headphones front side it says.
I've got green line out rear side and internal speaker.
A pink mic front side and a blue line rear side.
So in my particular case I went to the blue line in rear side option and I ticked the override button.
And next to that I selected microphone.
And then I clicked on the apply now button which is on the right hand side.
I got a momentarily momentary error appearing but on checking the monitor the monitors within the Ubuntu setting I found that my microphone was now responding.
So that was great.
So that was good to apply now.
So also notice below that you've got installed boot override so presumably that's adding something to a configuration file on your system so that when you reboot it became becoming permanent.
There's also a removed boot override so again that just removes whatever it's added to your configuration file.
I didn't do much digging around to see precisely what configuration file it's changing.
But I wasn't a bit of a hurry really and I was really trying to get this thing working.
I noticed when you do it it said something about it being experimental.
So obviously your mileage may vary.
There's also an options section which has a radio button for show and connected pins.
I don't know what that is.
Set model equals auto. I don't know what that is.
And there's also advanced override and I don't know what that is.
What is nice is I've got a button saying read documentation and when you click it it actually has documentation.
In it they have heading such as documentation for hti jack retask.
They've got a quick start section, a quick end reset section.
Did it work section?
They explain what all the things are and options.
So I'll probably leave that for you to read further.
Because I think if I read that all out it would be kind of boring wouldn't it.
So I think really that's probably enough for just now.
Almost forgot.
If you need to contact me I can be contacted at mrsx at hpr at googlemail.com.
That's mrx80hpr at googlemail.com.
Thank you and goodbye.
You've been listening to hccopublicradio at hccopublicradio.org.
We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday.
Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by an hpr listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast then click on our contributing to find out how easy it really is.
hccopublicradio was founded by the digital dog pound and the infonomicon computer club
and is part of the binary revolution at binrev.com.
If you have comments on today's show, please email the host directly,
leave a comment on the website or record a follow-up episode yourself.
Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released under Creative Commons,
Attribution, ShareLight, 3.0 license.