Arch Linux

Coward

Member

Registered: 2009-06-24

Posts: 9

Unable to record sound - no sound capture

Hi. I'm trying to get sound capture to work on my Dell laptop.
Please give me suggestions of things to try or tell me what information I can post which could be useful for me to get help.

I have alsa, no pulseaudio or anything like that. I was trying to get fmit to work, but when I found no sound was getting captured I installed audacity and found I could not capture sound in that either.
Only the "Beep" channel is muted in alsamixer. I am in [All] view, so can see (in order) Master, Headphone, Headphone, Speaker, PCM, Front Mic, Mic, S/PDIF, Beep, Capture, Digital, Internal. In alsamixer I can hit Space to select put an "L Capture R" on the Capture bar, but I'm not sure what this is supposed to do and it appears to do nothing.

I'm not sure if this will help:

[jake@myhost ~]$ amixer scontents
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined penum
  Playback channels: Mono
  Limits: Playback 0 - 64
  Mono: Playback 40 [62%] [-18.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Headphone',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch penum
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 64
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Headphone',1
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch penum
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 64
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Speaker',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch penum
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 64
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'PCM',0
  Capabilities: pvolume penum
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 255
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 255 [100%] [0.00dB]
  Front Right: Playback 255 [100%] [0.00dB]
Simple mixer control 'Front Mic Jack Mode',0
  Capabilities: enum
  Items: 'Mic In' 'Line In'
  Item0: 'Mic In'
Simple mixer control 'Mic',0
  Capabilities: cvolume penum
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Capture 0 - 3
  Front Left: Capture 3 [100%] [30.00dB]
  Front Right: Capture 3 [100%] [30.00dB]
Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0
  Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined penum
  Playback channels: Mono
  Mono: Playback [on]
Simple mixer control 'Beep',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined penum
  Playback channels: Mono
  Limits: Playback 0 - 3
  Mono: Playback 0 [0%] [-18.00dB] [off]
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
  Capabilities: cvolume cswitch penum
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Capture 0 - 15
  Front Left: Capture 15 [100%] [22.50dB] [on]
  Front Right: Capture 15 [100%] [22.50dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Digital',0
  Capabilities: cvolume penum
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Capture 0 - 120
  Front Left: Capture 120 [100%] [30.00dB]
  Front Right: Capture 120 [100%] [30.00dB]
Simple mixer control 'Internal Mic',0

Playing sound works fine, but I can't record sound. Any help is appreciated.