Arch Linux

arobson73

Member

From: uk

Registered: 2013-01-19

Posts: 34

recording voice with microphone 3.5mm jack - Creative X-Fi Sound card

my sound card (Creative X-Fi) seems to be working for for playing sound, but not much happening when i tried to record my voice.
i can record if say i play some music via Audacity, then run the arecord from the comand line, it will then record the playing music.
i have played around with the alsamixer Capture settings, but no luck.
im only using alsa, though i did install pulse audio briefly, then remove it.
my analogue mic slot is at the front of my computer, next to the slot where i have my headset. there are quite a few jack slots at the back of the pc, it's not obvious which is a mic slot.
here are some of my settings:

arecord --list-pcms
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
pulse
    PulseAudio Sound Server
default:CARD=XFi
    Creative X-Fi, Front/WaveIn
    Default Audio Device
sysdefault:CARD=XFi
    Creative X-Fi, Front/WaveIn
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=XFi,DEV=0
    Creative X-Fi, Front/WaveIn
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=XFi,DEV=0
    Creative X-Fi, Front/WaveIn
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=XFi,DEV=0
    Creative X-Fi, Front/WaveIn
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=XFi,DEV=0
    Creative X-Fi, Front/WaveIn
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=XFi,DEV=0
    Creative X-Fi, Front/WaveIn
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=XFi,DEV=0
    Creative X-Fi, Front/WaveIn
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
[andy@arobson ~]$ arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: XFi [Creative X-Fi], device 0: ctxfi [Front/WaveIn]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

snd mods

snd_ctxfi       80739  0
snd_pcm         64017  1  snd_ctxfi
snd_page_alloc  6038   2  snd_ctxfi,snd_pcm
snd_seq         41560  0
snd_seq_device  4284   1  snd_seq
snd_timer       14902  2  snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd             45097  5  snd_ctxfi,snd_timer,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_seq_device

i have 2 microphones, so no chance both are broken.
alsa programs

paclocs alsa
local/alsa-firmware 1.0.25-2
    ALSA firmware package
local/alsa-lib 1.0.26-1
    An alternative implementation of Linux sound support
local/alsa-oss 1.0.25-1
    OSS compatibility library
local/alsa-plugins 1.0.26-1
    Extra alsa plugins
local/alsa-utils 1.0.26-1
    An alternative implementation of Linux sound support
local/alsaplayer 0.99.81-5
    A heavily multi-threaded PCM player that tries to excercise the ALSA library and driver quite a bit
local/lash 0.6.0~rc2-6
    A session management system for JACK and ALSA

audio card

lspci -v -s `lspci | awk '/Audio/{print $1}'`
01:00.0 Audio device: Creative Labs EMU20k2 [X-Fi Titanium Series] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Creative Labs Device 0044
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 28
        Memory at f3ef0000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        Memory at f3c00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2M]
        Memory at f2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: snd_ctxfi

card again

cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [XFi            ]: SB-XFi - Creative X-Fi
                      Creative X-Fi 20K2 Unknown

amixer

amixer
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
  Capabilities: pvolume cvolume
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 256 Capture 0 - 256
  Front Left: Playback 254 [99%] [0.50dB] Capture 256 [100%] [0.00dB]
  Front Right: Playback 254 [99%] [0.50dB] Capture 256 [100%] [0.00dB]
Simple mixer control 'PCM',0
  Capabilities: pvolume cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 256 Capture 0 - 256
  Front Left: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] Capture 256 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] Capture 256 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Front',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 256
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Surround',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 256
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Center/LFE',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 256
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 250 [98%] [-1.50dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 250 [98%] [-1.50dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Side',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 256
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Line',0
  Capabilities: pvolume cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 256 Capture 0 - 256
  Front Left: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] Capture 230 [90%] [-6.50dB] [off]
  Front Right: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] Capture 230 [90%] [-6.50dB] [off]
Simple mixer control 'Mic',0
  Capabilities: pvolume cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 256 Capture 0 - 256
  Front Left: Playback 254 [99%] [0.50dB] Capture 256 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 254 [99%] [0.50dB] Capture 256 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0
  Capabilities: pvolume cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 256 Capture 0 - 256
  Front Left: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] Capture 256 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] Capture 256 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Digital',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 256
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]

are there any other ways of getting voice / external sounds into the system, such as usb recorder (is that easier?)
i'll keep looking, any tips appreciated.

are there any alternative ways to record sounds via mic, such as usb mic, is this easier to get working ?
i'll keep looking for ways to investigate, any tips appreciated.

Last edited by arobson73 (2013-04-15 16:56:04)

arobson73

Member

From: uk

Registered: 2013-01-19

Posts: 34

Re: recording voice with microphone 3.5mm jack - Creative X-Fi Sound card

i think it might have something to do with my desktop line-in needing its own power source. so just simply plugging in a wired 3.5mm jack does not have enough power.  that is what i found out from trying on my mac mini.
same problem on laptop also, altough the internal mic on laptop is working fine, and quite decent recording is made.

anyone tried a self powered microphone 3.5mm on arch linux ?