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#1 2007-02-09 13:02:41

fishonadish
Member
Registered: 2006-11-04
Posts: 125

Mic keeps going silent

Hi,

I have a strange issue with my microphone - it just seems to stop functioning at times.  I don't use it much, and only noticed it because Skype occasionally doesn't work, and then tried the sound recorder.

I have a Realtek ALC883 soundcard, which uses the hda_intel driver. Whether or not the mic works doesn't seem to correspond to settings in the sound mixer - they can be identical to when it is working.

I'm using gnome and its volume-control app, and sound is through ALSA.  If I hike up the microphone channel, I can hear the mic through the speakers, but the sound recorder and recording-level-monitor get nothing.  Under capture I have 'capture' and 'capture 1' and under options I have two drop-down menus, both called input source, with mic, front mic, line and CD being the choices.  When the mic was working with skype, both the mic and front mic channels were set to nothing.  As you can see, there doesn't appear to be any logic to this.

If anyone has any idea what's going on here I'd appreciate it.  I don't know where to begin to solve this.
Let me know if there's other info that might be useful.

thanks,
Fishonadish

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#2 2007-02-09 13:47:10

filoktetes
Member
From: Skien, Norway
Registered: 2003-12-29
Posts: 287

Re: Mic keeps going silent

Have you tried using alsamixer instead of the volume control app?
I have another intel-hda soundcard that doesn't have perfect support
yet, and using oss mixers gives totally different result from alsamixer.

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#3 2007-02-09 17:34:50

fishonadish
Member
Registered: 2006-11-04
Posts: 125

Re: Mic keeps going silent

Thanks filoktetes. But the gnome volume app has a choice between HDA ATI SB (Alsa mixer) and Realtek ALC883 (OSS mixer), and I have it set to the former.  Presumably, this is equivalent to using Alsamixer - it seems to have the same set of channels/sliders etc. 

Switching to the OSS device, each of the sliders there seems to correspond to one of the alsa ones - i.e. when I slide it up and switch back to alsa device, a corresponding channel is increased.  The only exceptions are digital-1 and PCM-2 sliders in OSS, which correspond to a IEC958 and Headphones switches respectively.

Could using the OSS mixer make a difference, since all its functions seem to be affected by the ALSA one anyway?

Any other thoughts on what I can do about this?

Thanks.

Fishonadish

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