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
i’ve got the front mic working in skype – but it is on all the time now. is there a way to enable apps like skype to turn on the mic when they need it, but for the mic to be off until then?
I’m using xubuntu 9.04 (xfce instead of gnome). Skype’s only options for input and output are pulse. Sound works fine but the mic only produces a rhythmic clicking sound. This is the same with builtin mic and a headset. This is not a skype issue as I get the same results with xfce sound recorder.
clues appreciated
davidduckslammer @ gmail.com
Thank you kindly. This was a partial fix for me. I had been doing my testing through the built in mic but when I tested with an external microphone, it worked like a charm. This might lead you to believe this is a PC problem but, no, the built in mic works fine in Windows.
,[...] blog.mageprojects.com is another useful source of information on this topic,[...]
Skype has an option in the Sound Devices section which needs to be disabled. I found out that when this option was enabled Skype overrides any changes that the use makes from Ubunut’s sound preferences or alsamixer.
The option is: “Allow Skype to automatically adjust my audio mixer levels”.
Hello! I would like to thank you for your blog on this subject! I’ve searched a lot and finally your advice helped solve it! Cheers
i went on gnome terminal and its saying there is no such file like that D:
thanks ,I have solve my problem
I say it’s not relevant to maximize all the mixer channels. In fact, the overly boosted microphone volume settings will break the sound totally. A good volume level for my laptop soundcard was around 40% The more I added volume to it, the worse it came.
Anyway, my problem was that Skype settings in the sound devices tab didn’t show any other options than Pulseaudio, no matter what I did in my sound settings.
The microphone worked with my sound recorder but in Skype it only recorded some loud noise.
The problem was as I expected the volume level of my microphone. This time in the pulseaudio levels, which are separate from the alsamixer. I installed Pavucontrol (pulse audio volume control) and lowered the microphone volume level. The volume control itself didn’t even start, but I went to the control center, devices tab, and chose the output alsa and its properties. The right channel was boosting 100% all the time. I pushed reset button from the properties and it settled down.
Now everything works fine. I hope you understood my adventure.
Thanks! It worked like a charm
thanks for the advice
It helped me a lot .finally i found a solution to the mic problem
worked for me. awesome. thanks
Thanks for this blog. It helped me to solve the issue. I have Ubuntu 9.04 and IBM Thinkpad R51. After fiddled with the Alsamixer I could get the sounds right! I did not know how to open the Alsamixer, but found it very easy after these instructions.
For me the best results came via disabling the “Stereo Mic” in Alsa-mixer panel (gnome) and disabling Skype to automatically adjust the mixer levels too.
When testing the sound with linux sound recorder, I randomly get very crackled sound every now and then. However the other times the sound is clear. The skype works OK even though it only shows PulseAudio as options.
thanks again
Than you for the advice.
I had Skype playing back sounds correctly. But when I tried to make test calls the input from the microphone did not work.
In my case the solution has been really simple. I only had to un-mute the input volume under Tools/Preferences/Sound Preferences “Input” tab.
Thx mate!
Thank you very much. I am running skype 2.1 on Ubuntu 9.04 in my good old Eee PC 900. If I may add, in alsamixer > capture tab >Input source > make sure to select “front mic” if you want to use internal mic (near webcam in eee pc900) for capture, or “mic” if you want to use external mic / headset.
very useful, thanks!
shure microphone
Great article and comments