# ALC1220 and sound recording?



## elscripto (Jan 23, 2020)

Hi,
My MB is Asrock AMD X370 K4 with an ALC1220 audio chip.

FreeBSD installs 12.0/12.1/13.0 - I have output sound with excellent quality at all of them.
But I cannot figure how to record sound from the desktop. I've spent days in experiments, with various tweaks, wi/wo pinning,  either pulse or oss - no sound captured from the desktop.
At the same time when FreeBSD is a KVM Guest all these sound recording applications - OBS studio, SimpeScreenRecorder, recordMyDesktop, ffmpeg -  record flawlessly from within the FreeBSD guest.

So my questions are:
Has anyone with MB with an ALC1220 audio chip managed to record sound from the desktop when FreeBSD is normally installed on the hardware?
Or is the FreeBSD snd_hda driver just ..meh... for this specific ALC1220 chip and I give up further tries?


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## SirDice (Jan 23, 2020)

elscripto said:


> Or is the FreeBSD snd_hda driver just ..meh...


It's not. The "problem" with HDA is that there's a lot of customization an OEM can do. They can reassign pins to other functions, change the order and whatnot. Instead of having to create a specific driver for each implementation the snd_hda(4) driver is extremely flexible. But this does mean you sometimes have fiddle with the pin assignments to get it fully operational for _your_ situation.


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## shkhln (Jan 23, 2020)

elscripto said:


> But I cannot figure how to record sound from the desktop.



There is no such feature in OSS.


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## elscripto (Jan 23, 2020)

shkhln said:


> There is no such feature in OSS.



Hi, thanks for the share.
Is the lack of this 'feature' FreeBSD specific?

Because OSS implementation states:
Supports loop back recording. This enables you to "record-what-you-hear". Typically this is useful for recording streaming audio or trapping audio from applications


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## shkhln (Jan 24, 2020)

FYI, virtual_oss has a (somewhat wonky) loopback device support.



elscripto said:


> Because OSS implementation states:
> Supports loop back recording. This enables you to "record-what-you-hear". Typically this is useful for recording streaming audio or trapping audio from applications



Which OSS? The FreeBSD OSS implementation is quite distinct from the 4Front's one.


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## elscripto (Jan 29, 2020)

No luck in solving the problem with both OSS implementations, I guess I have to live with this astounding shortcoming in FreeBSD. 
As a consolation I have no problems recording from mic/line.


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