On 27 Feb 2010, at 09:06, kapetr wrote: > I am of course mindful that the quality of SW boost would be worse, > but for not "quality critical" use, it would be the simplest and cheapest > solution. It's not so much "quality critical" as "audible". I've tried that before: record something with a mic through an incompatible mic input and then amplify the result until you can hear what was said. I could, just about hear what was said into the mic above the noise. My local music shop sells a small battery-powered mic pre-amp, I think it's about £20 (call it €20 :-)) but they're definitely not expensive. A condenser microphone is also not expensive if you're not after high quality. You can tell it's a condenser mic if it needs a battery. Depending on what you're doing, though, you may prefer to get a mixer: the smaller Behringer Xenyx mixers (502?) are very good and will give you a line-level signal. jch ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance. See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev _______________________________________________ Alsa-user mailing list Alsa-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user