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Is it possible the cause could be you are routing the output of your speakers back to Line?
If you visualize it. the audio is going in circles. It's going out to the speakers via the output jack and back to the line via the splitter you mentioned in the first post.
It's possible this may have an effect on the audio quality.
If you want to record what you are hearing from the speakers, all you need to do is select Mix from your mixer program -- sometimes it is not required.
The other way is telling ffmpeg or recordmydesktop which device to capture audio from. i.e /dev/dsp for oss or hw:0 for alssa
If you have multiple sound devices, you need to choose the right device node:
/dev/dsp1 /dev/dsp2 or hw:1 hw:2
I saw the attachments of your old and new mixer settings. With these many options and sources to choose from, it becomes confusing to get the settings right. You have to test and re-adjust to get it right.
This is my Setup
A Microphone connected to the mic port of my soundcard.
Line-out is connected to my speakers.
Line-in is used only when I connect an external device.
When I want to record only from the mic, I select Mic as the recording source in the mixer. I open an application like audacity, select the recording source to mic, I hit the record button and start talking.
And it works.
When I want to record from the line-in only. I select line as the recording source in the mixer. I use a 3.5mm plug to 3.5mm plug. I connect one end to the external device and the other to the Line-in of my soundcard. I open audacity, select line as the recording source. I hit play on the external device and hit record in audacity. And it works.
When I do a screencast of my desktop and I want to record my voice, I select Mic as the recording source. I launch recordmydesktop and I start talking. I play back the video and my voice is there in the video.
If I want to include another audio source to go along with my voice, I select Mix from the mixer.
When I play back the screencast video, I hear my voice and the other audio that was playing.
The only mystery is why things works for some people and for others not. Even when you feel you got the settings right, it just works half way. And this is where you are right now.
Just keep tweaking and testing. That's how I got everything working for me.
Lets cross our fingers...
All of that makes sense, except I do not have a mix option. Because of that I can only record from one source. My solution before was to use the loopback to put the mic sound to the speakers, and feed it back into the line in and record from that. I have played with everything I can think of, and that is the only thing that worked.
Is there any way you know of to load the module for loopback?
Is it possible the cause could be you are routing the output of your speakers back to Line?
If you visualize it. the audio is going in circles. It's going out to the speakers via the output jack and back to the line via the splitter you mentioned in the first post.
It's possible this may have an effect on the audio quality.
If you want to record what you are hearing from the speakers, all you need to do is select Mix from your mixer program -- sometimes it is not required.
The other way is telling ffmpeg or recordmydesktop which device to capture audio from. i.e /dev/dsp for oss or hw:0 for alssa
If you have multiple sound devices, you need to choose the right device node:
/dev/dsp1 /dev/dsp2 or hw:1 hw:2
Let me know what you think.
It does make sense, but I don't see a mix in kmix, or alsamix. You would think a mixer would mix.....????
I don't think it goes in circles though, because I select input 2 to record from, but it does not go out the speakers again.
Maybe I just don't understand though. Is there anything that can actually mix two of the inputs? kmix does not, and alsamix does not. in rmd I can choose which channel to record from, but I can't select two of them....
I don't know no other way on your side to capture multiple audio sources without using Mix or the analog loopback device/channel.
I am also using PClinuxOS 2010 and I have the Mix option in kmix and alsamixer.
I included an attachment of the Configure Channels menu and Kmix. You can see I have Mix available. This is how I record multiple audio sources. The Mix will capture audio coming from line, Mic and speakers at the same time.
If I want to capture ONLY the mic and nothing else, I uncheck Mix and choose Mic where it says capture. And this will capture the Mic only. And vice versa with Line.
It's possible that the kernel or software is working partially with your soundcard. Some features of your soundcard may have been drop for some unknown reason. And if they did that, it's a real shame because some people may need that feature e.g analog loopback to work properly for them.
That is the problem I ran into with running 2007. In fact I think it is a limitation in my sound card. I cannot mix sounds even in windows. I ran a demo of camstatia, and it would not capture the mic, and the speaker sounds. From reading tons of stuff on google, it seems only some sound cards will mix like that. I was about ready to give up on getting it to work, until I decided to try analog loopback (which I had no idea what that was at the time). It surprised me when it worked. So The only options I see now is:
1- find a linux distrobution that supports analog loopback (I don't know if any up to date ones do).
2- try to see if I can get pulse audio to work with it.
3- get a new sound card, which I am willing to do, but when I talked with the geek squad at best buy they had no idea what I was talking about. They said any sound card would do what I wanted. But from my searching on google I see a lot of people with sound cards that will not mix.
I don't have any experience using pulse audio. I hear from forums and articles that pulse audio is very difficult to use at times and some people hate it because of that.
I use Arch linux as well. I dual boot Arch kinux and PClinuxOS 2010. Arch linux is a rolling release distro which means it is constantly on the bleeding edge. See my sig for link.
Also, you can make a new post and ask the LQ members what distro supports the analog loopback devive on your soundcard or other soundcards. You can post it in the Linux Hardware forum.
We tried our best, the problem is that analog loopback device. Which once worked, and now it doesn't.
BTW, the soundcard I use is a SoundBlaster 16. I purchase it in 1998 and still going strong.
I am going to try and use jack audio next and see if that can solve the problem... I have been avoiding that because it seems so confusing for me, but at this point I don't know what else to do.
And I have used arch before. It is a very nice distro. I may have a look sometime.
And thank you so much for the help...
Last edited by davidwillis; 04-23-2010 at 07:39 PM.
You could try asking some of the popular linux podcasts. Take take listener feedbacks and help questions. I know, because I listen to them. If they can't answer, they call out to there listeners and the listeners replay back to the show with replies.
Visit these sites and contact them. Everything is done by email.
I have not listened to this podcast, http://opensourcemusician.libsyn.com/
I heard about them from the podcast I listen above. This podcast discuss using linux and open source tools for musicians. Like hardware, software other related issues.
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