Microphone Problem, Used to Work, Now Nothing [SOLVED]

Using applications, configuring, problems
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rokytnji
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Joined: Tue 20 Jan 2009, 15:54

#21 Post by rokytnji »

First off. I usually use mhwavedit for troubleshooting mic issues in any distro I use.
It just makes things easier. All I can do is point you to some of my threads on my fixes.

Hardcap forum had my Macpup fix but that forum is gone due to spammers (arrrrgh)

http://antix.freeforums.org/eeepc-900-m ... t3433.html

Screenshots of mhwavedit in that AntiX thread. I know mhwavedit comes in certain versions of Puppy Linux. Maybe it is in yours?

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Eathray
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Joined: Sun 06 Sep 2009, 19:42

#22 Post by Eathray »

rokytnji,

Thanks for jumping in. I'll check your stuff in a bit.

Greengeek,

I'll dig out an external mic in a bit and give it a try... however, remember I've already had the internal mic working previously without the external jack, so... well I'll test it in a bit.

Watchdog,

Results of Upup:
Initially had the same results. I did however launch retrovol after playing with alsamixer, and I noticed that retrovol was showing 'capture' as unchecked. I went ahead and checked it, then I noticed a difference in the behavior of the school site's little flash recorder. Previously I had to right-click the box and select play for the thing to activate and show as ready. This time, it self-loaded and showed as ready without any assistance. it still did not capture a sound in recording, but something has changed. It seems to me that Alsa is not activating the capture setting (for whatever reason).

I need to take a short break. The Mrs. wants some firewood. It's Autumn and cold here :) I'll be back in an hour or two.

Thanks everyone for hanging with me. I need this gig working and I'm here for the duration until it's fixed.

be back soon.

Eathray

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Eathray
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#23 Post by Eathray »

Greengeek,

Tried the external microphone. No results.

K, I'm gonna take it up again in the morning. Thanks to all and see you tomorrow. Gotta hit the hay.

Eathray

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greengeek
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Location: Republic of Novo Zelande

#24 Post by greengeek »

Hi Eathray - if you look at the png pic of your alsamixer you can see that the third column shows mic vol is disabled in favour of "capture". If you look under the "capture" slider (column 6) you can see a dotted white line. Is this still the case or did you sort this out already? The dotted white line means that the capture slider is disabled.

If you haven't done it already move the cursor along till it is under the capture slider (and the word capture is highlighted in red), then tap the space bar to activate the capture slider.

Any change to the symptoms?

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Eathray
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#25 Post by Eathray »

Greengeek,

Attached is another screenshot of alsa settings for Upup. I think the settings are as you mention they should be.

eathray
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Eathray
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#26 Post by Eathray »

watchdog wrote: If you open recording in mhwaveedit how many levels of recording do you get? I think they are muted but I'm sure you get two levels: duplex-mic. This is a situation that I encountered with some laptops. If the mic works both the levels move when you speak and are recorded.
Okay, I'm not too familiar with mhwaveedit, and it will take me a bit to figure out those settings...

However, I can tell you that mhwaveedit does record. I made a small test and was able to make a recording. I would attach it, but no mp3's allowed.

So the microphone does work for some things, which tells me the following:

1. It's not a hardware issue.
2. The correct sound card has been selected.
3. The alsamixer settings are (at least generically) correct.

So... what's left?

Does this narrow it down any further?

Okay, so I'm working my way through the various suggestions here. I'm assuming we all see the site pretty much the same way, so I'm on page two, third post down for me by Watchdog. I wish the posts were numbered for easy reference.

Watchdog, does this affect your code suggestion?

Eathray

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Eathray
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#27 Post by Eathray »

Let me throw this out...

Could this possibly be a Flash issue?

Some of the other kids at the school using Windows were having to back up their Flash Players as well as backing up Explorer to previous versions. I didn't think about this until now because that was primarily a Windows problem for the other kids and our deal was working under Lighthouse64.

This was at the beginning of the semester. I wasn't at all thinking along these lines, but is this a possibility to try? I don't remember if I updated the Flash player in Lighthouse, but I might have. I could reboot and take a look at it...

Does anyone think this is worth looking at?

Eathray

watchdog
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Location: Italy

#28 Post by watchdog »

Right-click a youtube flash: try to set the mic there...

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Eathray
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#29 Post by Eathray »

Okay...

I decided to check and see if an older flash would work. You guys know I have my main gigs as Lucid, Fatdog and Lighthouse. I have in addition to that a bunch of save-files for various live-boot cd's (for those dorking around occasions). I remembered that I have Aragon's 4.2 smp remaster with Firedog and Flash 10x. I decided to just give it a try and see.

I booted 4.2 smp, set the Alsamixer settings as we agreed they should be, then adjusted the Flash settings to the correct settings (essentially to allow the school site to do whatever it wanted in three locations, Mic, Storage, and Peer-assist).

I refreshed the page, and boom. The little flash recorder was able to record.

This is apparently an issue of the software for the French lessons on the site needing an older version of Flash in order to function. It's kind of deceptive, because other Flash components on the school site work with all the newer versions of Flash, so I guess that's why it didn't really occur to me at first that this would be the issue.

Thank you to all of you for hanging out here with me and helping me get this deal figured out. Because it's related to my Kiddo's school stuff, I really appreciate you guys helping me figure this thing out.

eathray

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mikeb
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#30 Post by mikeb »

Newer flashplayers are gunked up with drm/anti downloading stuff and security blitzkriegs...... perhaps the latter is the problem...the older flashplayer is not trying to get some type of obscure authentication file that the newer one fails miserably to do.

I export my flash stuff as version 6 or 7 as it makes life a whole lot easier in this respect. Just playing a flash file that wants to use a local file in version 10 is a pain in the neck for example.

mais maintenant vous pourrez parler beaucoup de la francais.... (I bet thats wrong)

mike

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Eathray
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#31 Post by Eathray »

Mike,

Haha!

Pretty close but 'de la' makes it 'in the' French, and it should be 'le' but ya know... this has got to be one of the biggest challenges in foreign language... French is seriously tough.

Eathray

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mikeb
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#32 Post by mikeb »

hmm think its the .beaucoup de. meaning .lots of. so beaucoup de francais but I picked up lots of slang french living there so never 100% sure of such things.

pas de probleme

mike

ps I stand by my ontopicness as french lessons are mentioned

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Eathray
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#33 Post by Eathray »

Hey mike,

If you lived there, you're likely ahead of us... French is tough to start with and there's a lot of nuances like common vs formal, male vs female nouns, la vs le vs l... etc.

we've done 3 years of 'children's French' but this is French 1 and it's a big step up from the previous classes as far as the difficulty level. Give us the year and we'll take it up again.

:lol:

Eathray

NOTE:
I have to bow to Mike's superior skills among the Frenchies...
Our most recent lesson supports 'de la' as acceptable even though the noun 'Francias' is passive (an adjectival noun) the actual subject of the sentence being 'speech' or 'talk' (parler)... as in... What kind of speech? French speech. Doesn't seem right to identify the noun this way when it's acting as an adjective too...

But hey, We're French newbies!


speak

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