Laptop speaker vs earphone

[Jerry McAllister]

On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 12:29:45AM -0500, Lion G. wrote:

> Hi all, I have a weird question.
> 
> In my previous many laptops, whenever I plug in
> the earphone, the laptop speaker would stop
> (and I would only hear music through the earphone)
> 
> With my newest laptop (Acer Aspire 5050),
> the laptop speaker stays on no-matter-what.
> I would hear the same music in both
> the speaker and the earphone.
> 
> I'm using Ariff Abdullah's snd_hda driver on 6.2-RC2.
> The driver reports:
> pcm0: <ATI SB450 High Definition Audio Controller> mem 
> 0xc0000000-0xc0003fff irq 16 at device 20.2 on pci0
> pcm0: <HDA Codec: Realtek ALC883>
> pcm0: <HDA Driver Revision: 20061210_0037>
> 
> Another piece of info:
> The microphone hole has both the microphone symbol
> and the SPDIF symbol on it. Apparently the laptop
> uses the same hole for both plugging in a stereo microphone
> and plugging in a SPDIF device.
> 
> Also, none of the items in the mixer helps:
> they raise or drop both the speaker+earphone volume simultaneously.

This is not a software issue.
Some jacks are built with a make-and-break setup.  With that, when
the plug goes in, it presses back a contact that functions as a
switch for some other circuit - in this case, one that drives
the onboard speaker - thus disconnecting it whil the plug is in.
Apparently your new piece of hardware does not have that feature.
Probably they were cheaping out by a few cents.
The only fix is to replace the jack.   Unfortunately it is probably
built in, in such a way as to be very difficult to replace.

////jerry

> 
> I'm out of ideas. Has any one seen something like this?
> 
> Thanks all!
> 
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