Audio capture in Skype and other devices

by crash — last modified Jan 30, 2008 02:35 AM

— filed under: Multimedia Solutions

If your skype test call doesn't give your voice back then you may have to enable your "microphone capture" an your "mic boost" devices. Note that this aren't the "microphone" device. This also applies to any other program that need microphone capturing, as the ekiga VoIP service, and is not skype unique feature.

Applicable to Fedora Versions

Fedora 7+

Requirements

A program that needs microphone capturing, as skype, ekiga or any other VoIP program. Skype IS NOT a requirement, but is what I used to test.

Skype

Doing the Work

Enabling "microphone capture" and "mic boost" doesn't require installing anything, it is just a "preferences" matter, it woul be done using GUI mostly. This is an issue that is not affecting all machines (in my case it did).

Open a terminal
As normal user write:

$ gnome-volume-control

The "Volume Control" graphical alsamixer will pop up, check if you have "Switches" tab next to "Playback" tab, then ensure you have "Microphone capture" and "Mic boost" checked. Also turn off "Microphone" in "playback" tab as it can be a very buzzy friend (this has nothing to see with the microphone capturing, in fact you can remove "microphone" as I do. If you do not have "Switches" tab, "Microphone capture" or "Mic boost", do this:
Edit>Preferences
Microphone non checked, Microphone Capture and Mic Boost checked:
Then close, now you should see the Switches tab, ensure both devices just added are checked:
We are done. You should now be able to use your microphone in any VoIP application.

Troubleshooting

How to test

Do a Test Call on Skype or whatever application you want. If Skype used you should heard your voice playback after the second beep.

Common problems and fixes

Currently there are no known issues.

More Information

You can leave enabled your "microphone" (note this is not the same as "microphone capture" or "mic "boost"), just turn it off or down the volume of the thing, otherwise you can have a very annoying echo, neither disenabling or turning off "microphone" will affect microphone capturing, you just will not hear your self as you talk (in the computer I mean). Mic Boost is recommended yet not mandatory.

Disclaimer

We test this stuff on our own machines, really we do. But you may run into problems, if you do, come to #fedora on irc.freenode.net

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