[ltp] Q further: sound recording, A21m, Caldera 2.4

[linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org]

Robert,

Richard Neill's suggestion of trying the built-in microphone is a good 
one.  On my A21m, it works fine.  Then, when I plug in an exernal 
microphone, the built-in one is disabled.

I would suggest doing "cat /dev/dsp".  When the microphone picks up noise,
you should see garbage on the screen.  If this doesn't work, then you know
that your amplification or source select are not working.

Do any other input sources work?  CD?  Line in?

Also, I'm sure you've checked this, but I'd double-check permissions both 
to /dev/mixer and /dev/dsp.

Hope this helps,

Erik.

On Tue, 20 Jan 2004, Robert Hueckstedt wrote:

> Thanks to all for telling this newbie that in order to record I needed
> to turn the microphone on (:-).
> 
> Unfortunately, no matter what I do, I seem not to be able to do that.
> Something is not communicating with something.
> 
> What I have done so far is this:
> 
> I used KMix (in KDE) and GMix (in Gnome) to set, one by one, all the
> possible recording sources on this machine. Those recording devices are
> Volume, Line, Microphone (which I assume is the built-in one), CD, Line
> 1, Line 2, Phone In, and Video. One by one, with KMix (GMix) still "on",
> I then try the microphone I have plugged into the microphone jack. With
> Krecord, or Gnome's Sound Recorder, I then "record" a brief statement
> and try to play it back. No sound. I then checked the Krecord capability
> to play a wave file, and that worked fine. So, it can do that. I just
> can't seem to get it to record.
> 
> The only difference I noticed between Gnome's Sound Recorder and KDE's
> Krecord is that the former uses sox. I don't know what the other uses in
> sox's place, and I don't know what "sox" are anyway. And in any event,
> sound remained unrecorded no matter which GUI or recording app I tried.
> 
> I suspect there is an easy answer to this. Something else that needs to
> be "turned on"?
> 
> The KDE on this machine is 1.1.2. KMix is 1.0.1. Krecord is 1.5.
> 
> Grateful for any help. Bob Hueckstedt
>