Recording sound from a microphone

Mickald · 12-18-2008, 05:10 AM

I have recently installed Ubuntu 8.04 on one of my machines and as with all other installations I have tried I find my microphone does not work. I have asked before elsewhere but all I seem to find is that I must check that the mic is connected to the right socket (my headphones work so I think the pink jack labelled 'mic' next to it should be the right one), or I must go to the volume control and ensure that the mic is not disabled. I have done all that. Still the microphone does not work. I have used two different microphones and when I try sound recorder there is no sign of any mic activity. I even tried setting up Ekiga and the sound test fails on audio input.

This is really frustrating because I find it hard to understand why an OS doesn't automatically detect a mic being plugged in or why it seems to default to turning the microphone off. It wouldn't be so bad if the simple act of re-enabling it caused the problem to go away.

silenceGL · 12-18-2008, 08:15 AM

Hi,
Dreamlinux is not Ubuntu, so i might be wrong in here, but somwhere at ALSA-settings you will find a dropdown-menue where you can select different drivers for your mic. Try some of them (eg changing from "Realtek ALC267" to "HDA VIA VT82xx" worked in my case,depends on your hardware)
@nno

SgDreamer · 12-19-2008, 01:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mickald

I have recently installed Ubuntu 8.04 on one of my machines and as with all other installations I have tried I find my microphone does not work. I have asked before elsewhere but all I seem to find is that I must check that the mic is connected to the right socket (my headphones work so I think the pink jack labelled 'mic' next to it should be the right one), or I must go to the volume control and ensure that the mic is not disabled. I have done all that. Still the microphone does not work. I have used two different microphones and when I try sound recorder there is no sign of any mic activity. I even tried setting up Ekiga and the sound test fails on audio input.

This is really frustrating because I find it hard to understand why an OS doesn't automatically detect a mic being plugged in or why it seems to default to turning the microphone off. It wouldn't be so bad if the simple act of re-enabling it caused the problem to go away.

Hi Mickald

I don't use Ubuntu but audio configuration is pretty much the same across the board.

With whichever app your Ubu8.04 uses for your 'sound control', look at the options and checkboxes.
More often than not, you'll find a "jack sense" option or setting in the Input section/tab.
This is because many basic hardware setups share an input jack for line_in and mic_in.
Once jack_sense is enabled, I'm pretty sure your problem would be solved.

Mickald · 12-19-2008, 12:51 PM

Thx for the suggestions but I have had a really sobering experience regarding all this. I was using two mics associated with headphones to test things out and was getting nowhere fast except sound was just about recording. I fished out a freeby standalone microphone cheap as chips and it worked like a charm. The combo's work fine in windows and at £20 per throw I was expecting better things. It obviously isn't all about how much one spends is it?