On-Board Microphone

[gkedrovs]

Hey, Penguin people. :-) How's life in your world (I live in Paradise! Costa Rica! Sunny... balmy... ha!) Anyway...

I can't get my microphone to work in RH 7.2 Linux. My soundcard works fine. I can play music, hear sounds... happy. But, I need to record wav's, mp3's or RealAudio files from cassette to file.

In WinDoze (help me, I've fallen and I can't get up!) it's easy. I plug a double-male mini-jack connector into the earphone hole in a Walkman and the other mini-jack connector into the microphone port in the back of my computer. Zip! In goes the audio like it's s'posed to. Not so with Linux.

I have an MSI 694T Pro, MS-6309 (v5.X) ATX mainboard that has all this soundcard crap incorporated.

Do I need to get some sort of address info for the microphone and then tweek a conf. file somewhere?? Where would I find that info? And then what file would I tweek?

Thanks ahead of time, guys!

-Greg

[carlywarly]

If your card is working, it may just be a level problem. Open up a mixer and look at all the levels. Microphone may be low or muted. Raise it.

PS - you really should use the Line In socket, it will be better matched sensitivity-wise to your source.

[gkedrovs]

I tried it. Didn't work.

Here's what I'm getting:

1. I'm using Soundrecorder for a simple wav recording.
2. I checked in a mixer, and the microphone and line-in are both up and running fine. No mutes.

I get this message:

"Sounddevice not ready! Please check that there isn't another program running that's using the sounddevice."

I have no other sound programs running except the KDE desktop sound effects.

Now, here's a kicker: when I came back from taking a "p" (maybe a minute or two), Soundrecorder worked! It supposedly found the sounddevice and recorded a wav.

The wav file had some buzzing and clicking, but that's it. It wasn't totally blank. But, you certainly couldn't tell I recorded voice.

Help?

:-) Greg

[gkedrovs]

Follow-Up

It must be some sort of software configuration conflict because I tried a command line "rec" and recorded a wav file through the microphone just fine.

I'm still open for ideas if anyone has 'em.

Onward and upward...

-Greg

[carlywarly]

You could install audacity or glame and see if they are better. You can find them at www.rpmfind.net

[CrashTestDummy9]

Originally posted by gkedrovs


Now, here's a kicker: when I came back from taking a "p" (maybe a minute or two), Soundrecorder worked! It supposedly found the sounddevice and recorded a wav.

The wav file had some buzzing and clicking, but that's it. It wasn't totally blank. But, you certainly couldn't tell I recorded voice.

Help?

:-) Greg Are you sure the buzzing and clicking wasnt just the sound of you taking a "p" ?:D

[gkedrovs]

I installed Audacity. It's THE program for what I need to do. Doesn't work.

I'm getting the same error in all programs. It's either not finding the audio input device, or for some reason I don't have permission to the device (but I opened up all permissions 777).

Check it out:
1. /dev/dsp
2. /dev/dsp1
3. /dev/mixer
4. /dev/mixer1

All those are open for all users (chmod 777). No go.

I can hear the audio that I have connected through LineIn (or microphone - both work fine). So, the soundcard is configured right (both the input and output).

It's gotta be where those programs are looking for the audio input.

Example: Audacity looks default at /dev/dsp, but it won't recognize any of the other ones either.

Oh, yeah, mixer programs work great. Recognize audio input / ouput, and everything works great.

IDEA: Is there another another audio file that my LineIn and/or Microphone are being piped to, to which I need to point Audacity? That's the ONLY thing I can think of right now.

I'm stumped! (mildly aggrivated, too - I got my Palm to sync with Evolution today; big step; now if I could just record!).

-Greg

[gkedrovs]

After rebooting I get a slight sound pick-up on /dev/dsp, but it sounds a million miles away with a LOT of noise.

-gk

[gkedrovs]

Hey, I went face to face with a real LinuxGeek today. Wow! He TALKED to me and everything! ME!! A NEWBIE!! ;-) Just kidding...

Honestly, though, a guy just opened a Linux store here in San Jose, Costa Rica. Wow! A whole store dedicated to Linux, installs, upgrades, hardware, support, maintenance, etc.

Here are his 2 suggestions for my problem (maybe this will jar some other idea loose in somebodys brain housing group):

1. Do a mknod and create a /dev/dsp0. I have a /dev/dsp1, but maybe the software is looking for /dev/dsp to point to 0 and not one. Then he said to use ln to point /dev/dsp to /dev/dsp0, not 1.

2. Next option: install another sound card that is Red Hat compatible (on the list).

Anyone got a soundcard they want to loan me??

:-) Greg

[bwkaz]

Is /dev/dsp actually a symlink to /dev/dsp1? If so, is /dev/dsp1 a symlink, or an actual device? Either one might be a symlink to /dev/sound/dsp or something like that... if it is, then see if you can change the permissions on /dev/sound/* to something reasonable (like 0666 or 0660).

[gkedrovs]

Okay, BSN (big stinkin' newbie) question:

how do I check symlinks?

-Greg

[bwkaz]

ls -l /dev/dsp, and ls -l /dev/dsp1

At the end of the line that gets printed, there will be something looking like "/dev/dsp -> /dev/dsp1" or something like that. This one means that /dev/dsp is a symlink to /dev/dsp1.

You may also want to check whatever files those two point to -- ls -l /dev/other-file-name

[gkedrovs]

Thanks, man. I appreciate the help and your patience.

I have to do some junque in WinDoze this a.m., so it'll be a bit before I can get into my Linux world. I have a question for you, though...

In your sig you say you're a registered Linux user (number and everything). What's that all about? Got a site that I could check out?

Thanks.
-Greg

[bwkaz]

The word "register" in my sig is a link to the site that I've registered at, http://counter.li.org

Don't worry, you don't have to go register. I don't know if that was what you were thinking, but you don't. I think the reason the site exists is just to get some feel for the number of machines and people running Linux... but they know that because of the choice, there will always be many more people using it than what have registered there.

Of course, once you've registered, you get your number and can do fun things like put it in sigs and stuff. But that's about the only thing you get out of it.

Your decision, of course. ;)

[gkedrovs]

Something tells me this just can't be right:

ls -l /dev/dsp results in the line:
crw------- 1 greg root 14, 3 Aug 30 2001 /dev/dsp

From what was said in the post two up from this, this is screwed up.

/dev/dsp should point to /dev/dsp1, should it not??

Other results:
ls -l /dev/dsp1 showed /dev/dsp1 as the device pointed to.
ls -l /dev/mixer = /dev/mixer
ls -l /dev/mixer1 = /dev/mixer1
ls -l /dev/audio = /dev/audio

Why would these devices point to themselves?
Do I need to change them?
How would I do that??

Thanks!
-Greg

[bwkaz]

Oh, that just means they're not symlinks. They don't point anywhere.

Try to re-chmod 0666 them all, /dev/mixer, /dev/mixer1, /dev/dsp, /dev/dsp1, and /dev/audio.

Can you do something like cat /dev/dsp >file.au, make some noises into the mic, hit Ctrl-C to stop the cat command, and then try to cat file.au >/dev/dsp? If you do that, do you hear anything? If you try dsp1 instead of /dev/dsp, does that one work?

I'm kind of grasping at straws, though...

[gkedrovs]

Neat! They don't point anywhere! I'm unique! I'm unique!! (Oh, I feel so... special!)

Well, I think I need to get those files pointing SOMEwhere, don't I???

You're idea to cat some .au files is basically what I did with rec. I can plug in my Walkman (minijack to minijack) and hear the audio perfectly (and I mean PERFECTLY, comes through SWEET). But, when I try to record ANYthing, it doesn't. I got Audacity to catch a weeeeee little bit, but it sounded a million miles away with a freight train inbetween (lotsa noise).

How to reconfigure my /dev/dsp and/or /dev/mixer to point somewhere to something.

I'm beginning to think that RH7.2 didn't recognize my built-in sound card, and that's why Linux doesn't pick up the audio. The audio pipes through Line-In to Speakers fine because the on-board bios does that (I'm thinkin' it doesn't pass through Linux, just a straight line patch through preconfigured hardware). That would mean I need to get another soundcard (something I'm working on - I'd like to get a borrowed one before throwing money at the problem).

So, if anyone has a spare soundcard I could borrow... could you just bring it over to my place??

:-) - Greg

[gkedrovs]

I haven't done this, yet. But, tell me if this is what I need to do:

As root...


cd /dev
rm dsp
ls -s dsp1 dsp


Yeah? No?

-Greg

[bwkaz]

Instead of rm dsp, try, rather, mv dsp dsp-old or mv dsp dsp0 or something.

If you ever need the old dsp back, and you've deleted it, there is a way to recreate it but it's less of a pain to just restore it from "backup".

I'm really not sure of anything else to try though...

[gkedrovs]

Thanks. I might get back to this tomorrow or Saturday. I spent so much time today diddling with my cd burner that I'm gonna be buried in work tomorrow. Why is this Linux stuff so addicting?!

I think I could tinker and diddle all day long if my wife and my work let me.

I can't wait to get back to the States and get some books and maybe an old doorstop Pentium II. I need to get a network running. :-) Well, heck, why not? My wife has a computer. My kids have a computer. I could set up a file server... a printer server (why have two printers?!)... intranet mail...! :-) Improve marital communication! Linux works!! And then there's Apache to get up and running so I can test my new web site... php...

-Greg