[Techtalk] recording sound (skype)

[Julie Bovee Hill]

On 2/27/06, henna wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to get my microphone to work under linux, unfortunately
> it's not going very well :(. The only hints I've been able to find
> have been to unmute the the mic parts in alsamixer. So far I guess
> it's the OS itself wich is causing problems :), So is there anybody
> who've made it work that can give me some hints? (or keywords to
> google for, since I'm not even having much luck with that)
>
> I've got an Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER
> (ICH5/ICH5R) A C'97 Audio Controller (rev 02) (according to lspci) and
> am running Gentoo. (not that should make a difference, but you enver
> know :))
>
> henna

Hi Henna,

I'm running Gentoo and just recently tried my microphone and, much to
my surprise, it just worked on the first try and gave me an
opportunity to show off Gentoo to my friend whose mic was not working
under Ubuntu. My lspci output seems to be giving similar results to
yours:
Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM
(ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)

So it could be your kernel config. Here's what I have:
Device Drivers  --->
  Sound  --->
    <*> Sound card support
      Advanced Linux Sound Architecture  --->
        <*> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
        <*> Sequencer support
        < > Sequencer dummy client
        <*> OSS Mixer API
        <*> OSS PCM (digital audio) API
        [*] OSS Sequencer API
        [ ] Verbose printk
        [ ] Debug
        Generic devices  --->
        ISA devices  --->
        PCI devices  --->
          <*> Intel/SiS/nVidia/AMD/ALi AC97 Controller
        USB devices  --->
        PCMCIA devices  --->

I also did an emerge --search alsa to see what I have installed (and
it's nothing fancy):
*  media-libs/alsa-lib
      Latest version installed: 1.0.10

*  media-plugins/gst-plugins-alsa
      Latest version installed: 0.8.11

*  media-plugins/xmms-alsa
      Latest version installed: 1.2.10-r2

*  media-sound/alsa-headers
      Latest version installed: 1.0.10

*  media-sound/alsa-utils
      Latest version installed: 1.0.10

My microphone test was simply using the Gnome Sound Recorder 2.12.0,
and yes, I had to unmute the microphone, too.

I hope this helps,

Julie