On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 08:37:17PM +0200, peter clarke wrote: > I have > (I think) wound up all the levels to maximum in the mixer, but I still > get only -20dB even with shouting into the mic. Where are you measuring this -20 dB? At headphones, or using software? > It's the same for all hardware (2 internal and 2 USB soundcards, > different mics), 2 different computers, 2 different versions of Ubuntu > (Heron on my desktop and Ibex on my laptop) ... Heron 8.04 is somewhat old. Try with a Jaunty 9.04 or Karmic alpha 9.10 CD without installing. Boot from the CD and use arecord or whatever is available. Why? There is a possibility that this problem has been detected and fixed in a later version. Also, when these CD images boot they will use default ALSA levels rather than the levels saved on your system. > This started a few months ago (originally, when everything was first > installed, it was fine) so I'm pretty confident it's an ALSA-related > software issue. That's interesting. I suggest you hide the /var/lib/alsa/asound.state file and ask ALSA to reset the levels to default. sudo mv /var/lib/alsa/asound.state /var/lib/alsa/asound.state.orig sudo alsactl restore sudo alsactl store The expected output will vary according to the sound devices you have, but on a test machine here I get this from the "restore" subcommand: alsactl: load_state:1579: Cannot open /var/lib/alsa/asound.state for reading: No such file or directory Unknown hardware: "ICH" "Analog Devices AD1885" "AC97a:41445360" "" "" Hardware is initialized using a guess method After you have done this, check your microphone level again. If you find it fixes the symptom, compare /var/lib/alsa/asound.state with /var/lib/alsa/asound.state.orig to see where the differences are. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
