I got myself a mic today to chatter on Skype (I wish there was a good opensource alternative), however I seem to have rather shitty soundcard and the strength of the mic input volume is way to low. Is there a way for me to boost it up, without having to buy a new soundcard?
I just noticed the "[HELP] single questions" thread, I will hence forth post my questions there.
I take you've tried changing the settings in the mixer?
Also, are you sure your microphone isn't accidentally plugged into line in? Line in expects a lot more power in comparison to mic in.
Skype is windows-only though, isn't it? It's possible to create a device->proggie->virtual device->final proggie chain that can normalize the waveform under *nix.
>>2
Alright.
> I take you've tried changing the settings in the mixer?
I've tried looking for fanzy options in kmix, aumix and alsamixer without luck
> Also, are you sure your microphone isn't accidentally plugged into line in? Line in expects a lot more power in comparison to mic in.
Just checked, it's plugged in correctly. Thanks for the tip thou, now I know how to boost my tv-linein sound ;)
> Skype is windows-only though, isn't it?
Nope, skype is also for linux, mac and pocketpc. However it sucks abit since it uses OSS and not ALSA, hogging the sound system for itself.
> It's possible to create a device->proggie->virtual device->final proggie chain that can normalize the waveform under *nix.
That sounds like a solution I'm interested in. Could you point me in the right direction?
>>4
glad you approve!
It's been a while since I touched that stuff, so I can only give a general outline:
The process is something like making a named pipe with mkfifo. Use mknod if mkfifo doesn't fit your needs. Then use sox or some other program to process /dev/dsp1 (or wherever the mic is) and write to the named pipe. Make skype read from the named pipe.
Then watch Skype panic when it tries to perform IOCTLs on the named fifo. ;-) Skype will expect a character device, not a pipe.
What sort of sound card is it? Some of them have options in funny places. e.g. the Yamaha OPL3-SA3 in my old laptop came up with not one but two mixer chips -- the second one bearing all the goodies.
Which is why I mentioned mknod.
just use devfs (or whatever linux's equivalent is), instead of creating the devices manually.
Btw, ioctl is truly the worst syscall ever. It should really die.
>>8 mknod, yes, but then you need to know the major and minor numbers of the device... pain in the arse, and it doesn't allow for a program to sit in the middle and do the amplification.
mkfifo FOO is conceptually equivalent to mknod FOO p. And again, Skype will whine if it tries to set options on the "device" (such as the sample rate and size) -- as these are not valid controls for a pipe.
>>9 Actually devfs has been deprecated as of kernel 2.6.13 in favour of UDEV.
But otherwise, yes, your suggestion is sound. (Excuse the pun, ahhem)
I'm actually a bit curious about the whole idea behind devfs/udev. I thought those only create devices for the kernel. Can user-space programs use them to create virtual devices?
If everything is ok use ALSAMIXER and change to mic , move it all the way up and press enter , then the mic boost will come and move it all the way up to.
BTW:oss in skype , that may explain why i don't have sound in skype i hear but the mic is silent.
PS:I don't have oss , that old shit sucks.
Use OSS emulation.
modprobe snd-pcm-oss
should fix that real quick. ;-)
And make sure no other apps (such as esd and artsd) are using the soundcard.