i am having issues with my microphone on a MSI 630 series laptop.
yast reports my sound card as “MCP78S [GeForce 8200]High Definition Audio” my audio works fine, the mic seems to barely pick things up. for example if i scream into it or tap on it i can barely hear it upon playback. The issue is with the onboard MIC, i have not tested an external mic… i would prefer to use the internal mic anyways. using alsamixer i have enabled both the mic and the capture device, and turned their volume way up.
any help would be greatly appreciated, below is a link to the output from alsa-info.sh
Internal mics are notorious for not providing as good an input as the external mics. So I suspect you will get significantly superior behaviour from an external mic.
Having typed that, I then looked at your mixer:
!!Amixer output
!!-------------
!!-------Mixer controls for card 0 [NVidia]
Simple mixer control ‘Master’,0
Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined
Mono: Playback 17 55%] -21.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control ‘Front Mic’,0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
Front Left: Playback 19 61%] -6.00dB] [on]
Front Right: Playback 19 61%] -6.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control ‘Mic’,0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
Front Left: Playback 19 61%] -6.00dB] [on]
Front Right: Playback 19 61%] -6.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control ‘Mic Boost’,0
Capabilities: volume
Front Left: 1 33%]
Front Right: 1 33%]
In your mixer, try increasing the levels of the items I marked in red. In particular the last item (mic boost).
I have previously attempted to change the volumes in red… if all of them at 100% then i can barely hear the playback if i scream in to the mic.
i cant believe that the mic is that bad, i fugure there has to be an isse. i have windows xp dual boot… i will switch to that and test the mic just to confirm that it works better there…
I note you have an ALC888 for your PC’s hardware audio codec. Searching on the alsa web site I note this: Search results - AlsaProject which suggests there have been some improvements to the driver for the ALC888. Whether those improvements will help you I don’t know, and hence I can’t provide a definitive recommendation.
And while I can not provide a definitive recommendation, you could consider updating your alsa driver. If it makes things worse, you could always roll back to the older driver. To update, simply open a gnome terminal or a kde konsole and type “su” (no quotes, enter root password when prompted) and then copy and paste the following six commands in sequence one at a time, with your PC connected to the internet:
zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/multimedia:/audio/openSUSE_11.1/ multimedia
zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/multimedia:/audio:/KMP/openSUSE_11.1/ multimedia
zypper install alsa-driver-kmp-default
zypper rr multimedia
and then restart your pc and test your sound and mic.
If that does not help then you could consider applying a custom model option in your /etc/modprobe.d/sound file. For 1.0.19 of alsa the hda-audio-models.txt file has the following list of possible options (which can only be applied one at a time):
ALC883/888
==========
3stack-dig 3-jack with SPDIF I/O
6stack-dig 6-jack digital with SPDIF I/O
3stack-6ch 3-jack 6-channel
3stack-6ch-dig 3-jack 6-channel with SPDIF I/O
6stack-dig-demo 6-jack digital for Intel demo board
acer Acer laptops (Travelmate 3012WTMi, Aspire 5600, etc)
acer-aspire Acer Aspire 9810
acer-aspire-4930g Acer Aspire 4930G
medion Medion Laptops
medion-md2 Medion MD2
targa-dig Targa/MSI
targa-2ch-dig Targs/MSI with 2-channel
laptop-eapd 3-jack with SPDIF I/O and EAPD (Clevo M540JE, M550JE)
lenovo-101e Lenovo 101E
lenovo-nb0763 Lenovo NB0763
lenovo-ms7195-dig Lenovo MS7195
lenovo-sky Lenovo Sky
haier-w66 Haier W66
3stack-hp HP machines with 3stack (Lucknow, Samba boards)
6stack-dell Dell machines with 6stack (Inspiron 530)
mitac Mitac 8252D
clevo-m720 Clevo M720 laptop series
fujitsu-pi2515 Fujitsu AMILO Pi2515
fujitsu-xa3530 Fujitsu AMILO XA3530
3stack-6ch-intel Intel DG33* boards
auto auto-config reading BIOS (default)
If you post the contents of your PC’s /etc/modprobe.d/sound file, I’ll give an example of the syntax to use in applying one of the items from that list.
i updated alsa as you described and restarted. After I increased the volumes in alsamixer. This significantly increased the volume of the recordings. Unfortunately there seemed to be an incredible amount of static. I lowered the mic boost to see if that had anything to do with it and it lowered the volume of recording, but the static was still there.
My experience is you need to play with more than just mic boost to reduce the static. Take a detailed look at your mixer … on your PC a number of mixer settings are at 100% wrt the mic, that should be at a lower level (IMHO). I believe those are causing your mic static.
I believe the best results will come from improving the mixer settings.
I was going to recommend a change to your /etc/modprobe.d/sound file, but the new script link you provided indicates your sound hardware is an ALC1200, as opposed to the previous time you ran the script (with an older alsa version) which suggested you had an ALC888. Hence I no longer recommend an /etc/modprobe.d/sound file change, and other than tune your mixer, I have no further recommendation. If you are unsuccessful with your mixer, then IMHO you are into bug writing territory.
Please start a new thread for your problem. If using openSUSE-11.1, in the new thread, please also provide the output of running (with root permissions) in a konsole or gnome terminal:
/usr/sbin/alsa-info.shand post there in the new thread the URL that is provided. ONLY the URL.
And also post in the new thread the output of running in a gnome terminal or kde konsole:
rpm -qa | grep alsa
rpm -qa | grep pulse
rpm -q libasound2
uname -a
cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound
