can't record voice through mic

irvken · 04-27-2005, 03:54 PM

anyone got any ideas as to why I might not be able to use my mic to record anything?

plugged in, card works for output, alsa mixer has everything unmuted, kmix has mic as recordable device, all turned up for max, mic works under windows, user is member of audio group.

I must have missed something

foo_bar_foo · 04-27-2005, 06:47 PM

you have to enable what in confusing alsa terminology is a "capture" device
might be different for different cards but something like

amixer set Capture cap
amixer set Mix cap
amixer set Mic cap

irvken · 04-28-2005, 01:48 AM

at least that answer encouraged me to read the man page for amixer, although none of the three commands you suggested appear to do have done the job

I tried each one individually and tested separately, there is noise coming out the speakers when I talk up close to the mic, but neither krec or arecord seemed to pick up anything at all after setting up capture with each of the provided commands below. Maybe someone can tell me something from the outputs?

Code:

sean@1[~]$ amixer set Capture cap
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
  Capabilities: cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Capture 0 - 15
  Front Left: Capture 10 [67%] [on]
  Front Right: Capture 10 [67%] [on]

Code:

sean@1[~]$ amixer set Mic cap
Simple mixer control 'Mic',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined cswitch cswitch-joined cswitch-exclusive
  Capture exclusive group: 0
  Playback channels: Mono
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 31
  Mono: Playback 31 [100%] [on]
  Front Left: Capture [on]
  Front Right: Capture [on]

Code:

sean@1[~]$ amixer set Mix cap
Simple mixer control 'Mix',0
  Capabilities: cswitch cswitch-joined cswitch-exclusive
  Capture exclusive group: 0
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Front Left: Capture [on]
  Front Right: Capture [on]