Hi,

My mike appears to be dead.

My Mixer:

My Phonon settings:

It won't work, regardless of the device precedence.

Curiously, it looks like Phonon isn't really documented.

Could you be a tad more precise, please:

* which exact KDE version?
* did the microphone work before?
* What microphone is it, built-in, external, what connection type?

Also, please detail which application you are trying to use to perform recordings.
Note that if it is a non-KDE application it is not likely to be using Phonon and will have it's own preferences. Audacity has it's own preferences for instance.

Mamarok wrote:Could you be a tad more precise, please:

* which exact KDE version?
* did the microphone work before?
* What microphone is it, built-in, external, what connection type?

(1) KDE 4.10
(2) Yes, it's been tested
(3) External (a headset with two jacks).

And yes, bcooksley, it's Audacity . What would you recommend (1) for testing (2) to satisfy Audacity?

Audacity should be workable for testing purposes.

First I would check to make sure Pulseaudio is not running (from your KMix screenshot I would guess that Pulseaudio is not around however, which is supported by the Phonon screenshot as well).

Next, I would enter the Audacity settings and make sure the preferred microphone device is selected.
If multiple options are presented for the same physical device, I would recommend trying each one in turn until it works.

As a final fallback, you can try 'arecord' which uses raw ALSA directly and produces *.wav output.
If Audacity does not work, but arecord does, then the issue is with Audacity (and we can investigate from there).

bcooksley wrote:As a final fallback, you can try 'arecord' which uses raw ALSA directly and produces *.wav output.
If Audacity does not work, but arecord does, then the issue is with Audacity (and we can investigate from there).

Pulseaudio has never been installed. Ditto ALSA, except for the libraries required by Phonon. So I haven't got arecord. I guess it's safe to install alsa-utils.

Yes, installing alsa-utils is perfectly safe - it should be quite helpful as a diagnostic aid in this instance.

All systems have ALSA usually as parts of it are provided from the kernel level, and are thus compiled in there (unless you disabled it completely, or in favour of OSSv4)

bcooksley wrote:Yes, installing alsa-utils is perfectly safe - it should be quite helpful as a diagnostic aid in this instance.

$ arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC887-VD Analog [ALC887-VD Analog]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 2: ALC887-VD Analog [ALC887-VD Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

I tried this, lacking anything better to do, unsuccesfully:

$ arecord -f dat -d 20 -D hw:0,1 test.wav
arecord: main:696: audio open error: No such file or directory
$ touch test.wav
$ arecord -f dat -d 20 -D hw:0,1 test.wav
arecord: main:696: audio open error: No such file or directory
$ arecord -f dat -d 20 -D hw:1,1 test.wav
arecord: main:696: audio open error: No such file or directory
$

Info on the Web is confusing.

Try the following two commands:

Code: Select all

arecord -f dat -d 20 -D hw:0,0 test.wav
arecord -f dat -d 20 -D hw:0,2 test.wav

bcooksley wrote:Try the following two commands:

Code: Select all

arecord -f dat -d 20 -D hw:0,0 test.wav
arecord -f dat -d 20 -D hw:0,2 test.wav

No cigar. Not even close .

I'm mystified then, as your prior output from "arecord -l" states that the system has two devices attached to card 0, device 0 and device 2.
I'd suggest getting arecord working first, as Phonon applications and other applications have no hope of working if the bare ALSA system is not working properly.

bcooksley wrote:I'd suggest getting arecord working first, as Phonon applications and other applications have no hope of working if the bare ALSA system is not working properly.

If we hadn't run out of ideas...


I guess nothing new on these screenshots. I am not sure.

In both of those screenshots, it shows a "Front Mi" channel which appears to be totally muted. Do you have any idea what the purpose of this channel is?

You could try "hw:2" and "hw:6" as possible options to arecord as well (although I suspect that is not correct, just a guess based off the alsamixer output).

bcooksley wrote:In both of those screenshots, it shows a "Front Mi" channel which appears to be totally muted. Do you have any idea what the purpose of this channel is?

The muted one is "Front Mic Boost", whatever this means.

You could try "hw:2" and "hw:6" as possible options to arecord as well (although I suspect that is not correct, just a guess based off the alsamixer output).

Incorrect indeed.

I'm afraid I do not know why arecord will not work for you.
On my system I get this output, and using "hw:0,0" works fine.

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**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: CONEXANT Analog [CONEXANT Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

This indicates that "hw:0,0" and "hw:0,2" should be the right options for you to use.
As a last ditch option, check for any old or incorrect ~/.asoundrc or /etc/asound.conf files.