Some quick notes.

ALSA & Device Inspection

pactl list sources short Lists audio sources PipeWire/PulseAudio sees.

arecord -l Lists available capture hardware devices at the ALSA level.

aplay -l Lists available playback hardware devices at the ALSA level.

arecord -D hw:X,Y -f cd -d 5 test.wav Records 5 seconds directly from a specific ALSA device to test the mic.

aplay test.wav Plays back the test recording.

Volume & Input Control

alsamixer -c N Opens ALSA mixer for a specific card to unmute/raise “Mic,” “Front Mic,” “Capture,” and “Mic Boost” sliders.

(Spacebar in alsamixer Capture view) Selects the correct capture source (Front Mic vs. Rear Mic).

Service & Config Resets

systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber Restarts PipeWire and its PulseAudio compatibility layer to refresh routing.

rm -rf ~/.config/pulse ~/.config/pipewire ~/.local/state/wireplumber Deletes per-user configuration to reset audio settings.

sudo pacman -Syu alsa-utils pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber Reinstalls and updates the audio stack packages.

Kernel Module Tweaks

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf Removes or adds snd-hda-intel model overrides to reset driver pin mappings.