strange ALSA problem
 

hello
well I have a problem I can't find solution over google and LinuxQeustions.
I have mic on and if I incrise the volume, althouhg I can't record anything or even use Skype ...
How can I fix it?

Thanks you

It would probably be of great help if you were to mention what kind of sound card/device you have?. And what Linux distribution you are using?. What desktop environment you use?.
Anyway, a good place to start is to look at the sound mixer applications like kmix, alsamixer, etc. to see if the microphone is muted. You can also try command:

also check if it set as input source (in alsamixer: use tab to switch to record mode, go to mic and press space key)

oh sorry...
I could say it I forgot... I'm realy sorry
I have a Creatinve Sound Blaster Live!, Mandriva 2006 and KDE...
I start looking to Kmix and alsamixer as well and there is microphone active and I can hear me... anyway I realy can't record anything just because the /dev/dsp ... :X

...is in use? in this case, start up kcontrol, go to the sound settings and disable the arts daemon, this will free your device. maybe it helps setting arts to use alsa instead of oss, but I turned it of completely and used a custom command for playback of the system sounds (look out for the "extended settings"): "aplay"

ok :D this is realy fine :D
anyway, now I am using OSS right? :D

no, you are using alse with aplay, but alsa provides an oss emulation, some applications may use the oss interface and though this may block other applications, try starting then with aoss <commandname> if that happens...

hope this helped...

[guilherme@localhost suh]$ aoss
bash: aoss: command not found

Hi,

What kind of Sound Blaster Live! are you using? Is it the 7.1 24bit version? If you take a look at ALSA's device compatibility list here, you'll see that the Live! cards that rely on the "ca0106" module instead of the "emu10k1" do not support sound capture yet.

Check which module you are using with the 'lsmod' command. If you find "snd-ca0106", you may not be able to record sound or use a mic for Skype for the time being. You can pull out the sound card, and switch to the computer's onboard sound device if you have one.

Hopefully the above is just old news and they've fixed it by now.

Sam

well I don't know the card model.. but I'll try to find it...
ANyway, I can perfectly use Skype although I need to activate and deactivate the sound before