@jesse_b Do you not have access to the panic log?

kernel.org/doc/Documentation/kdump/kdump.txt is a wonderful tool so you never have to worry about losing panic information.

@forest I have it

lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/…

lol what historical baggage

@jesse_b Is it more likely to be the headphone than the sound card? I think my headphone is much older than the sound card. I'll see if there is another headset I can find to test with.

ah, just learned there might be a limit on simultaneous pressed down keys on Linux (don't know if it's from Xlib or something else though). The limit is basically max 2 keys for non-modifiers (modifiers being Alt, Ctrl, Shift) and max 4-5? if you mix all modifiers + 1-2 non-modifiers keys max. Don't know about FN keys yet.

@forest the lore part of the url threw me off for a second there. If I didn't know better, (or clicked for that matter) I would think it was some D&D related website.

Now that I think about it, it would be funny if someone made a fandom.com page for the Linux kernel. I mean there one for Vim tips so, anything is possible

@FaheemMitha I don't know what distro you're using, but maybe try to install pavucontrol. I recall this also somewhat works even with Alsa, although it's normally for PulseAudio. It will let you test much more visually if the sounds is working and where. You can also disable/enable some stuff that might help.

@forest ah, kexec. I didn't know it was also for dumping logs. I looked into it a couple months back for a personal project, one where I wanted to reboot to a specific OS on a multiboot system but found out it doesn't work that well on non-Linux OSes (it has mild success on older versions on Windows, and not sure if that even work with macos).

there a port of kexec for Windows though, but it only support cmd only, and I think it only work on Windows xp?

for the "port" in question: github.com/Sha0/winkexec

@NordineLotfi Yes, I use pavucontrol. I'm pretty ignorant about sound stuff, but it doesn't seem to be reporting anything abnormal.

Though if the headset was the problem (which seems most likely) it wouldn't.

and did you try to play audio while pavucontrol was open? If you look at the grey thingy that move when there sound, you can see if whatever doesn't work is actually working or not (don't know the term for that one, I guess sound visualizer? wave?)

I think you can also enable mono/disable stereo, might help as jesse_b previously mentioned

@NordineLotfi Yes, it shows the sound working. But it doesn't seem to display multiple sound channels (I don't know if channel is the right term). And to be clear, the sound is working somewhat. The background music is relatively clear. But the dialog is mostly inaudible.

My guess is that they are going out on different channels, but I know nothing about electronic sound, so I could be wrong.

@FaheemMitha if you have a pair of cheap headphones, you could test them with that to see if this display the same problem. Did you try to unplug the headset and see if the speakers (don't know if it's a laptiop or not, but if it's one, it should have some by default) has the same problem?

@FaheemMitha I know you can do it with pavucontrol, but I don't recall how. Although I know how on Alsamixer, basically you just have to press F5 and you can see all channels(?) if that's the right term (since I'm also not an expert in audio)

@FaheemMitha ah, you can switch profiles on your audio devices though:shallowsky.com/blog/linux/pulseaudio-pavucontrol.html

@NordineLotfi Unfortunately I don't currently have another pair of working headphones. These are much older than I thought. Purchased in 2009, in the United States.

The mic died years ago, but the headset itself was working till yesterday.

@NordineLotfi I'm not sure that is the same thing.

@FaheemMitha what about audio speakers? same problem?

@FaheemMitha yeah, I wasn't sure either

@NordineLotfi I don't currently have computer speakers either, as far as I can remember. I don't use speakers because I hate to disturb people, and I have no way of knowing who I am disturbing.

I see, that's understandable

I usually mute my speakers all the time too

I'm personally very sensitive to sound, and have often been disturbed by other people playing music and TV.

If you are super rich and live on your own estate, then I guess it's fine to blast away, but otherwise not.

Unfortunately it seems hard to find headsets that are durable and comfortable, and everyone agrees are good quality.

honestly, even the best quality probably start to wear down after 3-5 years. Unless some people know some trick or are just lucky in keeping theirs for a long time, most of mine started to have problem here and there, or the "cushion"? around the ears started to get removed/destroyed.

there also mild pain I had when wearing some headset, so I usually prefer headphones for that reason.

(also easier to keep only one side to your ear)

now for the problem at hand: only two way that wasn't confirmed to not work, audio profiles I mentioned earlier with pavucontrol. Those might work, and also seems to usually have mono as options? The second way I didn't mention is audio sink. You can make one, it's easy, I know how to make one, but the problem is I don't know how to undo it, so I didn't recommend it.

Some might know though so I'll leave it at that

The conductor in headphone wire is usually very anemic so it wouldn't surprise me if one channel's wire just became disconnected at some point in the wire from years of flexing back and forth

that sort of thing happened to me a lot with headphones yeah. Especially the one near the coil, for some reason deconnect/desolder itself after a long time (say more than 2 year) of usage.

@NordineLotfi I'm actually shopping for a replacement headset, since I doubt I'll be able to get these fixed quickly. Also Mon and Tue are sort of holidays here.

I'm assuming that the headphone is the problem. If it's really the sound card, then I have a bigger problem.

The sound card I have is pretty nice. But I don't know if I could get another one like it easily here.

amazon.in/gp/product/B00198DM2K/#customerReviews

As you can see, my review is at the top.

> You last purchased this item on 17 Feb, 2016

So it's 6.5 years or so. I suppose even sound cards even wear out.

Though statistically I suppose the headset is rather more likely.

I'm considering

amazon.in/gp/product/B0178Q8WU8

Not exactly a known brand, but for something like this it's a crap shoot anyway. Most of them probably get made in China and have a brand slapped on.

MSI is a pretty well known and reputable brand

@jesse_b Yes, I was actually just going to say that was a mistaken statement.

I think I confused it with something else.

It's a big Taiwanese company. Makes computer parts too.

Anyway, this one will supposedly arrive tomorrow, and had pretty good reviews. And Rs. 4000 is really quite reasonable these days.

Around USD 50.

seems high to me but also looks like a higher end set and pretty comfortable

Good ratings on Amazon.com too.

@jesse_b Prices here for computer stuff is often grossly inflated.

I would expect to pay around $20-30 for a headset but the last pair I bought has the same issue as yours after only a year or so lol

Anything up to 8 to 10 times is possible. Especially for cheaper items.

@jesse_b I'd be willing to pay a lot more, but it seems even expensive headsets aren't guaranteed to last.

but yeah that same model headset is selling for $39.99 usd on the US scamazon

I generally try to err in the direction of higher quality. It just pays to pay more.

@jesse_b Starts at USD 75 here.

amazon.com/MSI-DS-502-Gaming-Headset/dp/B07N1W7495

MSI DS502 Gaming Headset

smile.amazon.com/MSI-Microphone-Intelligent-DS-502/dp/…

@jesse_b Weird. The same thing for two vastly different prices.

this isn't weird -- it depends on the seller/provider ;)

some people resell, and a lot of times it isn't for cheaper. You can easily know if it's an official reseller/seller by looking at their profile and, if they have any, some address on their amazon page

if it's just a bunch of weird letter string together, most definitely a fake address or translated address

some chinese seller don't know how to correctly translate their own address, but also, sometimes, they use fake one. It's as if someone walked across your keyboard and inputted that as address

(chinese seller aren't the only ones doing this, but that's beside the point)

Because a lot of remote selller usually send their goods to amazon's warehouse, they don't actually need a real address on their profile.

@NordineLotfi You clearly know a lot more about Amazon than I do. :-)

Well, I ordered the MSI one. It's probably the best I can do at short notice. There are plenty of more expensive ones, but it's not clear they will do any better.

I just realised this is a USB headset. Dammit. Will that be a problem?

I don't even know how USB headsets work. Do they magically detect the sound card?

they dont need sound cards

@FaheemMitha ah, I may sound like I do, but this is just a result of my own personal "adventure" when doing remote shopping. You know, filling complaint, hearing here and there what people say on reviews, etc basically is what I did.

@jesse_b They don't?

I'm confused. How do they work without a sound card?

@FaheemMitha I had a usb headset once. As jesse_b said, they don't need one, because the driver/firmware/whatever make it work is present inside the usb headset. That and, most already installed support for usb devices on Linux already support most stuff anyway

@NordineLotfi Huh.

it's like when you're on Windows and it auto install it's own driver when plugging an usb devices. Sometimes it does that, other times it get something from the local driver folder, or fetch it through Windows updates. On linux it doesn't need that (except for some proprietary devices/drivers or other) because there already a lot of stuff the kernel support for most usb devices

all a sound card really does is convert digital to analog and analog to digital

yep, and also some other fancy function like hardware surround or such

which is something that can probably be done on a chip the size of a grain of rice

@jesse_b Oh. Is that all? And the headset manages that internally?

so the only real need for them is to be able to plug in an audio jack, but if it's usb there is no need for that

So are USB headsets common now? I don't think I've ever used one.

I'm not really sure, it might even be done with the firmware

@jesse_b Where does the firmware live? In the kernel?

that, or inside some folder on your linux distro

I don't know the specifics, but maybe forest might know better

I guess it would have to be done on the headset though especially in the case of the microphone since usb only has the ability to transmit digital signals. That audio going into the mic would need to be converted to digital before reaching the PC

@FaheemMitha sometimes. It's also possible the usb part is removable and is just an adapter for audio/mic or some other function (mine had something like that)

@NordineLotfi @jesse_b Well, it's supposed to get here tomorrow evening, so I guess I'll see if it works then. Fingers crossed.

@NordineLotfi How many headsets do you have?

I think 1? But I used the one some family member gave me once, so I kind of count them in too. I usually prefer headphone since it's cheaper and doesn't hurt my ears/top of the head as much

but I agree headset is much better quality (especially sound). I think the one I have is only used when I need a mic closer to the mouth (has mic support) but that's it

Headset is an over the head band? And Headphone is something inserted in the ear. Is that correct?

yep

some people use their headset by putting it on the back of their head instead, but I never tried it

Actually, a search suggests that the difference is a mic.

I don't know, I know I seen headset without mic support, so that isn't the only difference

I also know some really powerful headset/mic can serve as antenna for radiowaves. So if it's too powerful you can basically hear your local radio depending on luck

To quote a succinct answer from Quora:

> A headset is a headphone with a mic.

@NordineLotfi Hmm. Well for me, over the head is a must, I think. Something in my ear would drive me batty.

@FaheemMitha I wouldn't trust Quora, at least not as much as some SO/SE post :P Not that I don't use it, but I think there a lot of "personal opinions" rather than "experience" or "knowledge" based answers there

@FaheemMitha haha yeah, I used to think like that too. I guess it does feel weird when there silence and you use headphone on both ear, but when there sound going through, you get used to it to be honest

@NordineLotfi Agreed, Quora is iffy in general. And has a lot of straight spam, advertising, or just plain junk.

SE sites are generally more functional and reliable.

Having said that, I see other hits that say the same.

amazon.com/Wireless-Headphones-Without-Mic/…

didn't find any known brand but they aren't too rare

but given most of the market today is shifted towards "gamers", obviously most of them will have a mic, so yeah

@NordineLotfi Did you mean to write "headset without mic"? Because from what I read, headphones aren't supposed to have mics.

ha, I actually did write that on google but didn't look on the search result on amazon. I guess some people mix up tags for headset/headphones? amazon.com/… here for headset

seems like there a couple more brand there compared to the other one

@NordineLotfi Well, one would have to check whether they actually contain a mic or not. Amazon search results aren't reliable.

yep, neither are google...A lot of seller abuse tags by using unrelated or inexact ones, so it make search result less reliable

technically, even blogs and other non-shopping related website does it, but that's beside the point

I just noticed an odd thing. The version of apt's changelog obtained by doing apt-get -t unstable changelog apt is missing some of the recent entries in the stable version. This is quite unusual. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen that before.

Specifically, the entries for 2.2.2, 2.2.3 and 2.2.4 are missing in the unstable version of the changelog.

The unstable one jumps from 2.2.1 straight to 2.3.0.

Apparently USB headsets don't plug into audio jacks. I'm having some difficulty adjusting to this. I've used audio jacks for over 20 years, and have come to think of them as immutable features of the universe.

I don't think it's much different than usb keyboards no longer plugging into a PS/2 port

@jesse_b Perhaps not. But I've been using audio jacks for much longer.

Also, I mentally think of audio jacks as a place that sound comes from, though I realise that doesn't make sense.