What quality on the Microphone does the Acer AOD250 RealTech sound Audio require for to get good audio recordings. I don't talk HiFi at all just acceptable voice recordings.

The mike that I guess is the best quality I have just now is a

Speed Link SL-8707 has these specifications
100Hz to 16KHz
Sensitivity -38dB and
S/N Ratio is >60dB
which to me is rather good. Not sure about the Sensitivity -38dB
is that maybe too low output?
What should one
expect that Acer D250 using RealTech Chips and drivers for Linux? What is needed to make decent recordings?

Why I ask is that it is very noisy when I record using a Linux software recorder. The Dev told it is more the hardware that set the quality then his software if I could understand his answer to me.

So it could be that I have to go into some config and
set things like
Lame value lame -b 32 compared to lame -b 16

I need to learn how such values determine how much noise the digital rendering produce?
Could someone good at audio recording give a short explanation what to look out for when there is excessive noise and almost no sound except when one talk very loud close to the Mic and I have tested many different levels of setting on the Mic in and Mic boost on Retrovol and so on.

Is the RealTech Chips not good at signal to noise level?
I've searched and search and not find any spec for the input on the Acer Yes I have asked on their forum too.

Hi,

If you are using 'alsa' then you could try a pre-amp to bring the mic levels up. Hopefully the signal can be increased for the mic.

Look at So you want to be a Slacker! What do I do next? post #151 for some helpful information. Sure the procedure is for Slackware but you should be able to adapt for your distro.

You will need to setup alsamixer settings after configuring 'asound'.

Thanks onebuck for caring about me. It is obvious that I know too little.

I am using Retrovol and most likely will stay using that one. Has a Mic booster
so that is most likely similar to what Alsa have.

I should test with the higher qualites first and I have received instructions from the Dev that I can test with different values on Lame which is a new thing to me. I will look at their homepage to find out what it all means.

But all such things is way above my knowledge.
http://linux.die.net/man/1/lame

So one can change the quality by editing the config file.

What I had hoped asking here is that someone knows what these levels means.

Take that -38 dB is that good or very bad?
And the Acer D250 having Realtech chips where can one find out what input level the Mic input have? S/N dynamic? What is reasonable to expect? I looked in Acer support and them did not care to tell. Sad thing such attitudes.