On Wed, 20 Dec 2006, Old Man wrote:

> You have no idea what you're babbling about. When you suspect this is the
> case, you really should resist the urge to post.
>
> --
> Old Man

I can easily say much worse about you, Old Man. Please confine your
posts to what is of relevance to Linux, and in particular, Slackware.

Dominic

Joerg wrote:

> Have a look at the jacks of your soundcard and where you plug the
> mic in. Either in alsamixer or kmix (the "Inputs" tab) switch
> on "Capture" and the device to be captured, either "Line"
> or "Mic" depending on where you're plugged in and set the volume.

i think i am doing this already, but maybe not correctly.

> Unfortunately the mic input of some of the onboard sound devices
> is so weak that you won't get any usable results w/o external
> amplification.

oh!

> I use two soundcards, a SiS onboard sound device
> for playback and a ForteMedia for VoIP and recording.

coming to think of: do you (or does anyone else, of course) know of a
sound card working under linux (alsa) for both (speaker/headphone)
playback and mic input?
it doesn't need to have quadrophonic superaudio channels or surround
technology or somesuch goodies - just stereo playback and (mono) mic
input (yes, my kids want skype)...

thank you for your comments,
christian

Dominic-Luc Webb wrote:
> OK, then starting from the very beginning, do you know you have
> the right driver for your card and have required support in
> kernel? Are you pretty sure?

i hope so, but i don't know, really.
how could i make sure?

> If your mic is plugged into a line in,
> I could speculate that you need to add MIDI support or some such.

it is plugged into the mic jack; the 'line in' is still empty.

> Many mics are turned off or muted.

yes, i had to unmute it and turn the volume from naught way up...

> Rexima allows you to increase the volume for both speaker and mic.

right now, as mentioned earlier, i'm running under kde 3.5 and using
'KMix' which allows me to regulate speaker volume and, in theory, should
allow me to play with mic volume, as well.

> By default, the volume on mine
> is very low. Mics rarely go so bad that they give no signal
> whatsoever. Tapping on it should at least give a popping sound.

right.
in my vacuum tube amplifier days i tested mics this way.
but here nothing is to be heard, at all, leading me to suspect a much
more fundamental mistake on my side. :-(

> If
> you have a sensitive voltmeter, you can try testing for a small
> voltage generated from the mic.

i'll try to find my old vu meter to verify my mics are working, at all.

> Did you try rexima?

not yet, but i'm shortly going to!

thank you very much for your ideas&suggestions,
christian

Doug713705 wrote:
> Unmute your microphone input with the alsamixer tool is the first step but
> it's not the last !

quite.

> I spent several days (weeks searching some clues on google !) to understand
> this but in alsamixer, you have to go to the capture panel to see the
> *real* input menu, not only the microphone.

i found the capture panel (and the 'all' panel, as well, fwiw) while
playing with alsamixer.

> On this panel, select the capture device (all are named capture without any
> other information) related to your microphone and *press the space bar* to
> select it then set the volume up.
> The default capture device selected may be the wrong one. It's up to you to
> find the one that suit your config.

i think i already did this to the right capture channel - there are only
two of them here, and one is labelled 'mic'.
i tried the other one, though.

thank you, anyway!
christian

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006, christian wrote:
>
> coming to think of: do you (or does anyone else, of course) know of a
> sound card working under linux (alsa) for both (speaker/headphone)
> playback and mic input?
> it doesn't need to have quadrophonic superaudio channels or surround
> technology or somesuch goodies - just stereo playback and (mono) mic
> input (yes, my kids want skype)...
>
> thank you for your comments,
> christian


If I understand you correctly, you want to know if there is a sound
card that simultaneously permits mic and speaker such that it behaves
like you telephone receiver. In this case, your demands are very few.
My ancient Sound Blaster using the Creative Ensoniq 1371 does this
very well. I get varied results from onboard sound system, but the
SB cards were always pretty well supported. Make sure to use the
correct modules. My Creative Ensoniq has a specific module called
es1371. If you start shopping for cards, I urge you to have a look
at the hardware already supported. Older cards are sometimes favorable
because vendors have a way of selling the same exact product and model
number with a completely different chipset. I ended up just going
through the hardware/chips supported and shopping Ebay etc for cards
in which the seller could specify the exact chipset.

Dominic

Dominic-Luc Webb wrote:
> Did you try rexima?
yes.
after playing a bit (to no avail regarding my problem), it looks like this:
rexima

min . . . . : . . . . max
-> Vol <- [===================================|---------------]
71% [ ]
Pcm [=====================================|-------------] 74%
Line [================================|------------------]
65% [ ]
Mic [================================|------------------]
64% [R]
CD [========================================|----------]
81% [ ]
IGain [=======================================|-----------] 78%
Line1 [==========================================|--------]
84% [ ]
Digital1 [================================================== |] 100%
PhoneIn [================================================== |]
100% [ ]
PhoneOut [================================================== |]
100% [ ]

which makes me think i missed something much more basic than just the
mixer settings. :-(

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006, christian wrote:

> Dominic-Luc Webb wrote:
> > OK, then starting from the very beginning, do you know you have
> > the right driver for your card and have required support in
> > kernel? Are you pretty sure?
>
> i hope so, but i don't know, really.
> how could i make sure?

The fact you can control the speaker volume is encouraging. However,
KDE 3.5 clearly is not recording my mic either, and I know it is
working because I can hear my voice going to the speaker. It is
not necessarily so that all drivers and other software will do this
by default. I would try to see if Rexima does this differently. I
guess a real crude way to see if your mic is working would be to
use a speaker as a mic. If speaker works, it should work reversibly
as a mic for troubleshooting purposes... always nice to confirm
you're plugging in something that works.

Did you specify which sound card (and specific chip) you have
exactly? I just looked at your past messages and do not find
this. I think the 2 cards mentioned were Joerg's, not yours.

If you happen to come across a Creative Ensoniq 1371, which I have,
it seems to work OK for Skype.

Dominic

On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 21:17:21 +0100, christian wrote:

Hi Christian.

> sorry, this is going to be a longish post; english isn't my native
> language, and i may lack in technical professionalism, as well.

Ha, don't think that playing a "modesty" card is going to get you any
slack in this group!

> using slackware 11.0 / kde 3.5 / alsa i never had any problems regarding
> sound, i.e. *listening*; i can hear cds, mp3, wav, etc.
> hw: kmix tells me i've got a 'HDA ULI M5461'.

Same as my experience.

> but: i never ever succeed capturing some microphone input, try as i
> might; as i think i'm the only one with this problem, i'm pretty sure
> i'm doing something wrong (i unmuted mic input, though).

Same as my experience with one machine that has Intel integrated audio.
Mic works fine with other distros, not in Slack.

> this is beginning to bother me as i'm tempted to try to use skype.

Trying to use Skype was how I ran into the problem....

> is there any good reading on 'sound' on linux? mixers? HowTos regarding
> *recording*, not playback?

I don't have any better ideas than the obvious ones of (a) trying a liveCD
(Puppy is good on sound, and has a lot of legacy drivers that other
distros have dropped) to check the hardware and (b) twiddling every knob
you can find.

> i'm at wit's end, not that this would mean too much, in my case - but my
> friends keep telling me to buy an xp redmond machine (argh!).

You need better friends.

"Tomorrow morning - first thing - I'm going out and finding me some new
dearest friends." - Dorothy Parker

> rtfm pointers most welcome!

I'll leave that to those as prefer it.

> thank you for reading so far,

Still didn't tell me anything about Vietnam...?

Cheers,
Mark
--
Hell's bells, my .sig is still on the loose!

> His English is very good. Why does that prompt you to be an ass?

Well I wasn't being an ass to HIM, merely making an observation that his
use of English is far better than many who use it as thier primary
language. In a round about way, I was paying him a compliment.

If you are ticked off over my comment, my guess is you are an American
educator. Sorry to put it to you so bluntly, but YOU SUCK!

Dominic-Luc Webb wrote:

> If I understand you correctly, you want to know if there is a sound
> card that simultaneously permits mic and speaker such that it behaves
> like you telephone receiver. In this case, your demands are very few.

right now i'm using my onboard ali sound chipset, seen as 'HDA ULI
M5461' by KMix.
all playback i need (mp3, cds, wav) is working.
i additionally need a working mic input for local voip and skype.

i can't get one of my mics working with this chip set - and this is the
only thing i need, above and beyond what i've got, now.

> My ancient Sound Blaster using the Creative Ensoniq 1371 does this
> very well. I get varied results from onboard sound system, but the
> SB cards were always pretty well supported. Make sure to use the
> correct modules. My Creative Ensoniq has a specific module called
> es1371. If you start shopping for cards, I urge you to have a look
> at the hardware already supported. Older cards are sometimes favorable
> because vendors have a way of selling the same exact product and model
> number with a completely different chipset. I ended up just going
> through the hardware/chips supported and shopping Ebay etc for cards
> in which the seller could specify the exact chipset.

well - with my luck i'll end up shopping for cards without being sure
whether they are supported - or even in working order - and no chance to
find out. :-(

but i'll try to find old sb pci cards, for sure.
thank you for your help!
christian


btw - my chip set is seen by lspci as follows:
__cut__
00:1d.0 Audio device: ALi Corporation High Definition Audio/AC'97 Host
Controller
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Unknown device 818f
Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop-
ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium
>TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64 (4000ns min, 20000ns max)
Interrupt: pin C routed to IRQ 18
Region 0: Memory at dfff8000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=55mA
PME(D0+,D1-,D2-,D3hot+,D3cold+)
Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
__cut__