Subj : sound: very low volume when recording from the microphone
To   : alt.os.linux.suse,alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux
From : Alain Rey
Date : Sat Nov 13 2004 03:47 am

Hi,
I can't get a decent sound when I record from the microphone.
When I do:
arecord -t wav -d 3 test.wav
and speak in the microphone, then playback with:
aplay test.wav,
the volume is very low, and the quality of the recording very bad.

It's only when recording in Linux.
- recording from the microphone under Windows XP works perfectly well, I'm
sorry to say.
- playing streams and sound files works well under Linux (xmms and realplay)
- when I speak in the microphone, I hear my voice in the speakers and the
qualtiy of that echo is good (well, perhaps this is part of the problem:
there should be a way to cut this echo, as my sound card is full-duplex).

I've tried various volume settings in alsamixer, but that doesn't help.
I haven't tried recording from line-in.

I don't know what to look after (and I wish the ALSA documentation was a bit
more extensive, apart from the 5-years old minihowto).

My sound card is a Xwave-7000, the chipset is C-Media CMI-8738/PCI-6CH.
I'm on SuSE 9.1.

Some config data:
# cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound
options snd-cmipci enable=1 index=0 soft_ac3=1
# y9as.leFtcOMtGx0:CMI8738/C3DX PCI Audio Device
alias snd-card-0 snd-cmipci

# lsmod | grep snd
snd_seq_oss            30976  0
snd_seq_midi_event      7680  1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq                54672  5 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_pcm_oss            56868  0
snd_mixer_oss          18688  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_cmipci             33204  4
snd_pcm                96776  2 snd_pcm_oss,snd_cmipci
snd_page_alloc         11012  1 snd_pcm
snd_opl3_lib           10880  1 snd_cmipci
snd_timer              25476  3 snd_seq,snd_pcm,snd_opl3_lib
snd_hwdep               9732  1 snd_opl3_lib
gameport                4736  1 snd_cmipci
snd_mpu401_uart         7808  1 snd_cmipci
snd_rawmidi            24992  1 snd_mpu401_uart
snd_seq_device          8328  4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_opl3_lib,snd_rawmidi
snd                    59524  22
snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_cmipci,snd_pcm,snd_opl3_lib,snd_timer,snd_hwdep,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device
soundcore               8800  1 snd



There is a second sound-related problem, less important: many "system
sounds" (like the melody when logging in or logging out of KDE) are very
distorted, although applications like xmms play with a good quality.

Any help greatly appreciated.

.