Audacity doing crappy with the mic
 

Hi guys, this is my first time to post a new thread....pardon the ignorance, please. I am completely new to Linux (less than a week with Debian, It's great!) and I'm trying to start up Audacity to make a recording. The problem is that I get really crappy sound. It sounds like Darth Vader 3 rooms down the hall whispering his bedtime prayers :p (seriously!). I can barely hear it, and it is all distorted. I have to bang the microphone for Audacity to show any input at all. I use ALSA, have tried 2 mics (1 brand new, bought today), I have turned the mic volume up with kmix, aumix, and alsamixer (just in case I got one wrong)....I'm stumped. All help and suggestions are appreciated but there's no hurry, no one is gonna die if you don't respond, take your time ;) .

:newbie: :Pengy: Go Linux! I'm loving it so far. (Sorry for the propaganda) �Viva, viva!

you are most likely just hearing bleedthrough
alsa speak for "record" is "capture"
you need to turn on capture and enable Mic as a capture device
for my soundcard it's
amixer set Capture 10 cap
amixer set Mic cap

can also be done with any mixer but sometimes the mixers suck unless you can find a good one for your sound card

No.....I tried it but I still have the same problem. It's almost like the mic is working fine, just 100 times quieter. Personally, I think the problem might be audacity....but I haven't tried any other programs.....Thanks for the reply.

Nope, I was wrong. I have the same problem with krecord.

Let me continue talking to myself.... :-D Now I think it's my sound card. It helped me a bit to turn the mic boost on, but not much. It could just be a crappy sound card (I bargained for it at a flee market in Chihuahua, Mexico :-D)