Get your microphone working in Ubuntu 9.04 and skype (x64)
Hi,
After hours of testing i finally found out how to get my microphone to work under ubuntu.
The thing that i had already working “out of the box” is that you could talk in your microphone and you would hear it come out of your speakers but somehow it wasn’t recording it when i tried to record the input from the microphone. So once i got it working i started writing this howto so that others can get a microphone (and skype) working as well. This howto should work in any linux distribution since it’s not ubuntu specific. It is gnome specific so i don’t know how well this works (if at all) in kde.
The first thing i did (and you should do as well) is open a console (ALT+F2 -> gnome-terminal or xterm).
Now type this:
[sourcecode]
alsamixer
[/sourcecode]
now you should see something like this:
My advise would be to just put all at max EXEPT for the values that contain anything like “boost”.. i put them up to test with and it didn’t really improve microphone quality or made it louder. It just made it sound horrible and it was even affecting the normal playback sound as well.
Now once this is done press TAB in that alse mixes stuff. You should now get the properties for “Capture” (seen at the top left corner in those few lines of text) devices:
I’m not sure if anything here helped getting it working but i turned all “boost” things off and the rest on. Feel free to tweak those settings a bit to see if they actually do something with the microphone.
Now, once you’ve done this, you “should” have your microphone setup currectly and it should just work. There are just a few more issues. When you start recording your microphone imput you most likely don’t hear anything when you play it back. That’s because the “Sound Capture” setting in gnome’s sound settings is set wrong.
So open the gnome sound settings: System -> Preferences -> Sound and you should see this:
The way to test if your microphone is actually working is by clicking on the “Test” button behind “Sound capture”. Press test and talk in your microphone. If you hear yourself with a slight delay from the speakers you have it working. If not try every option in the list (in the screenshot it’s on “ALSa – Advanced Linux Sound Architecture” between the “Sound capture:” and “test”. one of them should be working. Also note that there seems to be double values with exactly the same name but they do act differently! atleast that was the case for me.
Once you’ve done that and you found one that seems to be working (the right one for me was: “HDA Intel something…” which was in the list twice. the top one did it for me) then you can start recording your microphone if you want. Try it out in gnome-sound-recorder but i won’t go deeper in that stuff.
Oke, by now your microphone should be working and you can record your microphone input and it seems to be working fine. If that’s the case then you now install skype (i used this link: http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-ubuntu-amd64 which should be the latest x64 version) Open skype and go to the “Sound Devices” tab in skype.
For me the Sound out and Ringing was just fine but the Sound in was wrong. To get that one good you have to (sadly) test every option in the Sound in list and “Make a test call”… say something and see if it gets out of your boxes after the second beep.
This is how i got it working.
Here are my settings from the volume control stuff in gnome incase you might be interested in those as well.
Note for the image above: i have no clue why the microphone icons have a cross in there. i could turn them off/on whatever i wanted but the setting didn’t seem to be saved and didn’t seem to mather for the microphone.
It should all be working fine now.
I hope this howto has been helpfull for you. If you found another solution or have something to add to this feel free to post so in the comments.
Good luck,
Mark
Hi Mark,
how come you used alsa and not pulse?
took me a while but i got skype + pulse working on 9.04 x86
Cheers
Justin
What makes you think i used alsa?
If your referring to the Sound Preferences screenshot where ALSA is indeed selected for “Sound capture:” then that’s because by default it’s on that. i changed that to HDA Intel something. The rest of the audio stuff is still using the defaults (which are pulseaudio) from ubuntu 9.04
Cheers,
Mark
hi, sorry to pester.
where did you get the 64 bit version of skype?
i just installed 9.04 but cant seem to find a version of skype for 64 bit os? all the official copies for linux complain about the `wrong arch` – i am assumming they are 32 bit?
kardenal
here: http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-ubuntu-amd64
dpkg –force-architecture skype-pkg.deb is another method since all the 64-bit version does is prefer 32-bit qt compatibility libraries over native
Mark,
I am novice and trying to follow the steps you have described. How can one change the alsamixer settings in the panels?
Tibor,
Like said in my post.
press ALT + F2 then type in gnome-terminal
once in there (that’s a console) type in alsamixer and you will see roughly the same as what you see here in the screenshots.
Good luck,
Mark
Thanks for your description!
however, my microphone does not work since 8.10, and now that i upgraded to 9.04 it still doesn’t work… by any chance perhaps you know something i could do to make it work? in the forums my thread for help has no replies
Thanks!
@Deggial,
All i can sugest you is follow my howto. Perhaps the most important step is the part where gnome sound config part and inside that the Sound capture: options. make sure you test out every single option in that dropdown.
Hi!
My microphone was working great before upgrade to 9.04 but now (atleast in skype) it works well but it randomly starts lagging and i sound like a robot. Any solutions?
Joel,
all i can suggest you is to follow the howto that i posted… If that isn’t working then i’m out of ideas for now
Definive solution for me in a Ubuntu 9.04 i386: UNINSTALL Pulseaudio.
It also fixes other sound issues
Enjoy with ALSA!!!
Afeter folowing all the steps my microphone is working. I mean, when I speak, I can hear my voice in the spekers. However, I still can’t record in gnome-sound-recorder nor in the Skype test call (it was too easy to install it this time).
After hours of frustration, your solution worked liked a charm. Sound Recorder and Skype working perfectly. Many thanks.
oke, some interesting things going on here.
Some people report that it’s working and some say it isn’t working.
In the case of: White Castel, i would say you missed a step or did something wrong since you got it working partly. In all other cases you will just have to try this howto and if it’s working afterwards : Awesome! otherwise: bad luck but i’m out of ideas.
@Giuliano, your suggestion to remove pulseaudio and use also only is probably going to work for everyone that already has a working microphone BUT remember that you will ose all pulseaudio functionallity and that is something i personal rather avoid since it does offer some nice things (provided that it’s working!) With todays ubuntu you should be able to get it working and the way to get it working is described in this howto.
thank you for your help, it’s working!
Thanks a lot i managed to get mine working am running on Ubuntu 8.10
seems like it is working now. only difference is I put sound in and sound out in skype settings on pulse.
why do I need to spend hours to have (and still don’t) skype working properly? it used to, I managed to follow one of the instructions (sorry, I’m just a human and can’t really reproduce the steps), but then, on 1st reboot, all gone:-(
Hi,
I’m running kubuntu 9.04 and I followed similar steps when i tried to configure my mic.
For output and ringing, I’ve chosen default device.
For input, I have “HW Intel:0″ and “HW intel:6″ as possible sources.
I tried choosing both input sources as Input device. Still no luck :/
The output modules are working as I can play DVDs and listen to Music.
I configured alsamixer too and chose “Front Mic” as input source in Alsamixer as well as in Kmix, my default sound mixer
My sound card has an Intel HDA audio chipset and my computer is a HP DV6700t laptop.
Can anyone tell me if there is something I’m missing?
Many thanks for your help.
Amit M
Hi all,
Skype is working.I had to choose “HW:Intel,0″ as the input device.
Thanks,
Amit
>i sound like a robot.
I also had this problem until i reseted the options in skype.
MIC on: HDA…
Speaker on: pulse
agree to Amit and nick.
Mic on HDA Intel (hw:Intel,0)
and speaker on pulse.
have to correct my post from may 9th were I said that I had put both on pulse.
Thanks!
Here the solution
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=789578
hi, thanks for the info. Makes me very happy I’m not running Ubuntu!
On my Toshiba Portege R500
I had to change the input source in capture settings from cmd line alsa mixer. Changed it from Mic to Front Mic and yes, i could use Skype on Ubuntu 9.04
hi evrybody,
I have a hp paviliion dv6 and I use ubuntu 9.04 recently. Now I have a problem about sound card.
ubuntu 9.04 know my sound card but when I click on buttom for test output I don’t hear any thing.
please help me, how should I do?
I’m probably too slow and thick but on my freshly and for the 3rd time installed UBUNTU9.04 I can’t get hold of Skype regardless what advice I followed. Once I managed to get Skype icon but I couldn’t register because the middle button “sign up” wasn’t active, only the side ones, “close and reset” would work but for my purpose it was useless since I needed to sign up. Now I’m getting again message about wrong architecture of “amd64″. Can anybody put it to me simply? I don’t want to go again blindly to package installer and install anything I think would fit.
Thank you
Worked for me on thinkpadx30 ubuntu 9.04 desktop edition!
Thanks man
I dn’t knw how to work with it ….
Sound capture isn’t workin in Sound Preferences …..
can anyone help me ??
my mail is bhagyapwc@yahoo.com
tks!!
Hi,
I did not look through all the answers, but here is my solution:
What you did in alsamixer is OK. But the real solution is (or was with me) that both e-mike and i-mike were muted on my computer by default:
Click the loudspeaker icon near the clock, choose “volume control” and see if the mikes are muted (little red cross over them). That’s it!
I tried getting skype and Ubuntu 9.04 and all this “pulse” crap to work but I still had no Mic.
But This quick and dirty DID WORK:
# sudo aptitude search “pulse”
# sudo aptitude purge/remove “pulse”
-reboot-
# In Ubuntu 9.04 -> Sound Properties -> Volume Control
-> enable Mic.
(if skype is installed set all the audio crap in skype’s options back to “autoselect/defaults…”, and/or alsa)
or,
# sudo aptitude install skype
Thats it. Skype works perfectly.
you could probably leave the “libpulse0″, “gst.reamer0.10-pulseaudio” client packages and skype will still work.
anyway, obvisouly if you use pulse (as a server) extensively then don’t remove those, but for me I don’t give a crap !, alsa, oss,… are more than good enough for me and I need skype
err atleast until EKIGA can get rid of skype -that would be good.
thank a lot for this instruction, it worked for me.
Thanks. Worked for me (Kubuntu 9.04)
Thanks for the info and blog. Got it all working can’t remember how. Hope I can do it again if need to and I’m sure I’ll need to.
All op sys are getting to complex, linux, microsoft, mac. Apps too, take a look at adobe acrobat cs4, over a Gb of app/crap. It’s the first product adobe came out with and they have had too much time to…improve it?… how would the french say it?… fuck it up!
perhaps it’s time to return to CPM.
Cheers, took a bit of trial and error but your directions were extremely helpful!!!
Thank you. This was a big help! You stopped my frustrations about that my sound recorder just gave a beep. Now I can finally record my voice!
The critical option for me was in System/Preferences/Sound to choose “HDA/Intel (Alsa mixer)” as the Maser mixing device.
Thanks a lot to all of you
it is working
i have a hp dv5 laptop with amd processor.
i have insatll skype and ubuntu9 but still i am struggling with microphone.i cann’t hear my voice when i record my voice nor my skype microphone is working.
When i type “alsamixer” i am not getting same image which u have posted above.So please help me.
thx!
Thanks! This worked for me!
Thanks a Lot, this worked for me.
I do all my work on ubuntu & my job contacts are only on skype, this helped me alot.
Thank you very much again
Hello there, thanks a lot for your help. Worked for me very well. Keep the good working.
worked like a charm… thanks for the tips.
ephman
Thank you for your tutorial. I finally got my mic and skype working on my GX620 laptop. I was about to give up
thanks a lot for the tips
i have an acer aspire 4730z, when i record the audio using gnome-sound-recorder , actually record the sound but when i tried in skype nothing happend. can some one help me??????
Thank you, your advices helped a lot.