Sony USB camera has no audio since 4.2 upgrade

User Support Hardware Issues
1

I have a Sony USB webcam that I was using without any problems under Q4.1, but after the upgrade to 4.2 it has no audio. The video works just fine but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get the microphone to give any visible audio level. Only once was I able to get Zoom to cooperate but Teams Meeting (Using Edge browser) isn’t playing nice, and that’s what I need it for. Sound recorder also sees no input as well.

Using pulse audio volume control shows no signal at all, so its not a volume issue. There doesn’t seem to be any input device to set it to that will show that there is any input signal coming from the device. It’s plugged into sys-usb and then passed to the AppVM, and this used to work find without playing with any settings, but now it doesn’t. Even trying it in sys-usb directly it doesn’t appear to work. I’m looking for ideas on where to look.

I had to host a meeting tonight and could not for the life of me figure out how to get it to work. I had to use an old laptop instead.

2

Disconnect USB webcam from your machine.
Open the sys-usb terminal and run this command:

sudo journalctl -f -n0

Connect USB webcam to your machine.
Ctrl+C to stop the log after USB webcam is finished initializing.
Post the resulting log here.

3

$ sudo journalctl -f -n0

Aug 28 01:12:53 sys-usb kernel: usb 2-2.2: new high-speed USB device number 11 using xhci_hcd
Aug 28 01:12:53 sys-usb kernel: usb 2-2.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0c45, idProduct=636b, bcdDevice= 1.00
Aug 28 01:12:53 sys-usb kernel: usb 2-2.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=1, SerialNumber=3
Aug 28 01:12:53 sys-usb kernel: usb 2-2.2: Product: USB 2.0 Camera
Aug 28 01:12:53 sys-usb kernel: usb 2-2.2: Manufacturer: Sonix Technology Co., Ltd.
Aug 28 01:12:53 sys-usb kernel: usb 2-2.2: SerialNumber: SN0001
Aug 28 01:12:53 sys-usb kernel: usb 2-2.2: Found UVC 1.00 device USB 2.0 Camera (0c45:636b)
Aug 28 01:12:53 sys-usb kernel: input: USB 2.0 Camera: USB Camera as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:07.0/usb2/2-2/2-2.2/2-2.2:1.0/input/input16
Aug 28 01:12:53 sys-usb kernel: usb 2-2.2: 3:1: cannot get freq at ep 0x84
Aug 28 01:12:54 sys-usb mtp-probe[36637]: checking bus 2, device 11: “/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:07.0/usb2/2-2/2-2.2”
Aug 28 01:12:54 sys-usb mtp-probe[36637]: bus: 2, device: 11 was not an MTP device
Aug 28 01:12:54 sys-usb systemd[1203]: Reached target sound.target - Sound Card.
Aug 28 01:12:54 sys-usb systemd[1]: Reached target sound.target - Sound Card.
Aug 28 01:12:54 sys-usb mtp-probe[36689]: checking bus 2, device 11: “/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:07.0/usb2/2-2/2-2.2”
Aug 28 01:12:54 sys-usb mtp-probe[36689]: bus: 2, device: 11 was not an MTP device
Aug 28 01:12:54 sys-usb kernel: usb 2-2.2: 3:1: cannot get freq at ep 0x84
Aug 28 01:12:54 sys-usb kernel: usb 2-2.2: 3:1: cannot get freq at ep 0x84

4

There seems to be an issue in kernel with this specific webcam:
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=212771

You can try to check if microphone works in some general Linux OS (e.g. Fedora Live) to check if this issue is related to Qubes OS or not.

You can also try to use newer kernel version in your qube to see if this issue is fixed there.
To install the latest kernel version for qubes run this command in dom0 terminal:

sudo qubes-dom0-update kernel-latest-qubes-vm