My microphone does not work

[TDK800]

Strannik, try this, fixed the mic, for Skype too, and got pulseaudio still installed: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8397068

[arphaya]

Hi!

I have recently switched from windows to ubuntu 9.10 and as it is the case with numerous others, neither my inbuilt mic of my sony laptop nor the headset mic works.

I have installed
linux-backports-modules-alsa-2.6.31-15-generic
and also the newest version of pulseaudio. (and see both of them in the synaptic package manager)

I have tried all possible options (mic1, mic2 and line-in) of the sound preference in the system menu and also tried to turn up all mic-settings (not muted and an enhancement in the red region) when running $ alsameter and checking then with $ pavumeter --record.

I do see activity recorded when I plug in my microphone, but do not hear this or any other sound from the mics.

Well, thats the case with me and I am looking forward to try other options...

Cony

[Zenith88]

For me the microphone issue appears to be purely Pulse Audio related.
I just moved from Fedora 12 (where nothing at all worked) to Ubuntu Studio 9.10 where so far only microphone capture in Skype does not work.

I solved that problem in Fedora by uninstalling Pulse Audio. With PA installed Skype had only PA devices in the Sound Devices tab. Once uninstalled, it allowed me to choose Default for output and Audigy2 microphone capture for input and worked fine.

A very angry developer from Fedora project told me to use pasuspender to launch Skype instead of uninstalling PA, but it apparently does not work - Skype still only shows PA devices in the sound options.

So in a few seconds PA goes into the trashcan and I'll report back either way.

Edit: Uninstalling PA completely fixed Skype. The only annoyance is that now I don't have a mixer on the task panel, but I can live with that. Now if only I was able to determine the root cause. Is it emu10k driver, or PA problem?

Now the only microphone related problem remaining is notorious 0.6 second recording in Audacity.

Strannik, try this, fixed the mic, for Skype too, and got pulseaudio still installed: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8397068

Unfortunately that will not work for every user. What the link is discussing is updating to a new version of kernel. That is generic Ubuntu kernel, while for example, yours truly runs Ubuntu Studio sporting its own low latency preemptive kernel.