Librem 14 - 3.5mm Jack for Microphone

Hardware
1

Wondering what the status is of work to get the the Microphone jack working on the Librem 14? There was an existing thread but it seems to be dead now/not getting responses. Last update (~7 months ago) was there were still issues with microphone noise and inconsistent jack-detection: External Microphone via 3.5mm Jack (Librem 14)

The laptop has been in production for about a year now, is there still an effort to resolve this issue or is it safe to assume that the 3.5mm jack will not be use-able for microphones going forward and we should opt for Bluetooth / USB microphones? If so, perhaps the marketing material (https://puri.sm/products/librem-14/) should be updated to reflect that the laptop does not contain a functional microphone jack.

Happy to hear any progress! There’s definitely others in the community that might be able to help resolve the issue if the blockers/struggles are shared transparently – maybe someone in the community has contacts or leverage over at Realtek and can conjure up assistance from that end :).

2

Please update coreboot/PureBoot and EC firmware if you haven’t done so already and try again.

3

Thanks for the suggestion, but I’m already running latest:

EC FW:

board: purism/librem_14
version: 1.5_2021-10-28

PureBoot:

###############################################
##       Purism Librem coreboot Utility         
################################################
#    Device: Librem 14
#    Serial: P1********************86
#  Firmware: PureBoot (coreboot+Heads)
#   Version: Release 20

Is it expected to have been resolved in the EC firmware from last October? That is roughly same time period that the other thread mentioned the team was still working on it.

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4

Not only is the microphone not working with the headphone jack, but it doesn’t work with Bluetooth headphone microphones either. This wouldn’t be as big an issue if noise cancellation wasn’t a huge issue with the built-in microphone. Whenever I video call someone, all they here is WHHHHOOOOOSSSHHHH from the fan, and other loud noises when anything on the laptop chassis is touched like typing or using the mouse.

That’s in addition to other audio/video issues still present, like the sound output needing manually switching, the microphone volume occasionally resetting to a lower volume than I last left it, the speakers not appearing to be balanced yet, the camera seemingly switching back and forth between an orange & blue filter sometimes, and my face being brightened too much in low light, high single light source situations.

Doesn’t give a good impression to other potential customers when I say I’m using a Linux laptop from Purism.

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