Interpid Sound Solutions

[L8erG8er]

Thanks, Markbuntu, I've been following your guides for a while now, and this one is just the right length and detail for us poor novices.

[mahmater]

Markubuntu! I really need your help.over a month now since I installed 8.10 everything is fine except for the microphone.It just drove me and many others crazy.

1. I cannot record anything in applications_sound and video_sound recorder.
2. I followed all of your instruction here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=997506
3. whenever I UN-mute the mic in the volume control_recording,it becomes muted again (a little red sign).
4. in the pulse audio applet_volume control_input and output devices everything is muted and cannot be unmuted (the red little sign cannot be removed).

many thanks in advance for all the great effort you invested for the benefit of the ubuntu community.

[markbuntu]

There is a more comprehensive guide here that includes help for getting recording working. Also, there seems to be problems with some of the drivers in ALSA 1.0.17 for microphones.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=843012

If this does not help you should file a bug report at Launchpad or at alsa.org.

[mahmater]

thanx for replying. indeed I tried the tutorial about recording too.May be I should file abug.I never filed one,but I will learn how to.

[markbuntu]

The lttle red x is always there in front of the little speaker in the PA volume control. If you click on it a little box appears around it and the box above fades, that is when the mute is active.

I think this is a problem with alsa since it happens in the alsa mixer. I have seen others complaining about this in the forums so a bug report in either launchpad or alsa.org would probably be warranted.

[hoboboot]

THIS WORKED FOR ME, AMAZING! THANKS ALOT, WITHOUT THIS, PEOPLE WOULD HAVE NO CLUE HOW TO DO THAT ****, WITH HALF THE MIXERS /CONTROLS I NEEDED WERENT EVEN INSTALLED. WHY WERENT THEY... THATS LAME FRESH INSTALL, DETECTS CARD, AND THEN I GOTTA SET IT UP MYSELF? OH WELL ITS WORKING NOW SO YOU'RE DOPE MAN YOU ROCK. im gonna link this in my other threads as a solution.

[Roasted]

Can anybody tell me if they have Skype working with this? I cannot get my microphone to work to save my life and I really need Skype to get working. Any input?

[markbuntu]

Can you use your microphone at all?

What hardware do you have?

[Roasted]

I'm running a relatively new computer (about 2-3 months old) with a Turtle Beach Montego DDL 7.1 PCI sound card. My headset is a 15 dollar headphone/microphone combo set from Target, made by Logitech. I'm running Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10 64 bit. I did not alter my sound after installing, so whatever I have (pulse, alsa, whatever) from the get-go is what I have now. The only thing I've tinkered with is the settings.

Under sound preferences the top 3 lines are Autodetect, with Sound Capture being ALSA. My device is CMI8768, which is the chipset my Turtle Beach sound card uses.

When I open my volume control, I have Master/PCM/Line-in/Microphone/Phone listed. They are not muted and the levels are up.

Within volume control, if I go to the recording tab, I see microphone capture. It has 2 icons below it, one looking like a speaker for volume level and the other on the right is a microphone. It has a red X on it. If I click the red X to remove it, close volume control, and go back in, the red X reappears.

I'm not sure what else I can do.

EDIT - I have no idea what I did. I didn't make any changes. But suddenly my microphone decided to work. I mean, I shut my computer off last night, so maybe the "reboot" helped? Nonetheless, I hear my voice in my microphone in sound recorder. Now I just gotta get skype to work because it still won't work right.

EDIT AGAIN - Again, I made no changes to the system, only to skype to try and get it to work, and now my microphone does not work AT ALL.

This is by far the most inconsistent problem I've ever had in Ubuntu. It seriously makes me consider switching back over.

[markbuntu]

I have a SIIG sound card with that same chipset and it works just fine for me on Hardy and Intrepid. I assume you have followed the OP and got the packages, If so you can try some things.

Try setting System/Preferences/Sound/Sound Capture to pulseaudio and then in the Pulseaudio Volume Control/Input Devices right click on the ALSA PCM.... (C-Media... to make it the default. Open the gnome-alsamixer and make sure the mic is not muted and the rec box is checked along with the mic boost box. Make sure the Mic-in Mode box is not checked because that will redirect the Center/LFE output to the mic jack. Open the volume control from the top panel amd make sure that in Switches the mic boost capture box is checked. The volume control in the panel and the gnome-alsa mixer do the saem thing but they do not each have everything, weird. I could not get my mic to record until I turned on the mic boost capture switch. It was driving me crazy for a while.

Push up the sliders and see if you can hear the mic. Try to record something. In Skype set the input and output to pulse. I have not used skype on Intrepid but I see here in the forums that many people have got it working and many have not.

Your on board sound card could also be causing some of this but you have the pulseaudio volume control now so you can control that. The kernel could be changing the order of the sound cards each time you reboot which it will do since it arbitrarily assigns the interrupts on each boot.

I have a more involved guide with many links here. There is a link for Multiple Sound Cards that explains that problem and how to fix it.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=843012