Comment 9 for bug 998862

I hit this issue on Mint 16 (which is derived from 13.10, running PulseAudio 4.0), on an MSI X370 laptop, which also has Realtek ALC269VB. I have been able to identify the issue (in a way), and work around it for now using pavucontrol, though it's clearly wrong.

The problem is that the normal capture stream for the "Built-in Analogue Stereo" device is completely distorted, to the point where it appears to be just flat noise with no correlation to anything the microphone captures. It's not truly the case, you can actually hear certain loud sounds when you bump up the capture volume, but they're very, very mangled and unrecognisable. However, the *Monitor* of Built-in Analogue Stereo has perfectly fine, clear sound. I don't know enough about PA to pinpoint the issue, but it shows that the problem is purely in the software and has nothing to do with hardware or faulty drivers. If I were to chance a guess, I'd say it's something like the wrong codec or sample format being output, different than what is advertised. Because the monitor stream collects all data passing through, it has the ability to replicate the capture stream, but is apparently not affected by whatever is causing the ordinary capture stream to mangle its data.

Now, the workaround is to install pavucontrol, and in Input Devices tab set the Monitor of Built-in Analogue Stereo as the fallback device. This will make all apps use that rather than the capture device directly, thus letting you use the microphone. It's ugly as sin and very wrong, but it works while we look for a real solution.