sound problems
 

Ubuntu 8.04, Thinkpad T22

I've been playing with Audacity (1.3.4) but can only record one channel from it even tho I've got it set up as Stereo. My audio output to headphones returns perfect stereo sound from streaming audio. I'm thinking it must be an ALSA issue so here are my settings:
a) Vol Control > Sound Fusion CS46xx (Alsa mixer)
b) Sound & Video > Sound Recorder > "your audio capture settings are invalid; please correct in Multimedia".
c) Pref > Sound & Devices > the only test sounds that work are from OSS or the Autodetect options. ALSA and the card ones do not.
d) Sound & Devices > Alsamixergui > "alsamixer: function snd_cti_open failed for default. Connection refused." Same message from Terminal > alsamixer.
e) Sound & Devices > Gnome Alsamixer > I don't see any dual channel meters, suggesting that maybe it is not set for stereo pickup.

My novice thoughts:
1) That I don't have the real ALSA mixer installed, just the gui. Should I try to install Alsamixer on top of this?
2) I can't determine the stereo nature of Gnome Alsamixer like I could when I had the genuine Alsamixer at one time (or maybe I still do but just can't find it) and that I don't know how to work with the gnome version. Is the gnome alsamixer as good?
3) Maybe I'm doing something wrong in Audacity but I think not since Skype and all the test functions don't work either.

Thanks for any suggestions as how best to spiff my sound settings.

Some things to check are that you have the right sound card driver for your hardware. Some sound card drivers may be incomplete, although I would think that they at least have stereo sound. I have not had that problem. You can list your soundcard, so that someone might have input on the driver.