Live microphone playback?

[Dansk]

This is a bizarre question and I'm not sure where to put it. I don't know if it's a hardware or software issue, so I'm putting it in this forum as it seems to be pretty general purpose.

The essence is this: I play bass, and I like to run my bass preamp through my microphone input and listen to my playing through headphones. This gives me the ability to easily play along with my music collection via the computer's mixer, or to record what I'm playing.

This was never a problem before, as I always had a desktop computer with an extensive set of soundcard options. Recently though, I bought a laptop for primary use, (an HP dv6), and all the sudden I'm no longer able to play through the computer.

Here's the issue: live playback of the microphone input is disabled, I'm assuming to prevent problems with feedback. (Since all new laptops have built-in microphones and not a lot of space between them and the speakers, feedback on a live mic could probably be a really, really irritating problem.) I also have an unusually limited number of faders in alsamixer, only about four or so. (My previous soundcard had well over 20, most of which did nothing at all.)

There's an option to mute or unmute the microphone, but this only affects the capture end of things, not playback. There's no microphone fader listed under playback in alsamixer.

So is there a way to get around this really irritating block on the microphone input? I'm not sure what else to try, I've done everything that I know how to do. I've never encountered a computer without the option to unmute the microphone before.

[Dansk]

Any thoughts? Anyone? Does this sound like a software issue or a hardware issue? If it's software then it can be fixed, right? Are there alternatives to alsamixer?

[yaye]

Are you talking about the GNOME Alsamixer? If so, do you have the checkbox next to "Mix" checked? The lack of sliders and the inability to get it to do what you want, may be because the audio capabilities of chipset in the laptop aren't as extensive as the desktop.

[glubbar]

I have the same issue (pianist here, piano is plugged in through mic input). Using an Asus 1215B netbook.

I can record myself just fine (provided I lower the mic boost and mic input level, otherwise it's hella distorted)
but I can't have live feedback from it. I do however have a perfectly clear feedback when (dual)booting Win7. I'm assuming this is because I have the right drivers for my integrated sound card (it's a realtek thing, not sure which model) on Win7.
Using alsa mixer doesn't give me much info either.
Perhaps we need not using the default generic linux drivers or something, but I can't find a way to get Realtek drivers for linux anyway. :/

EDIT: nevermind, Realtek DO have linux drivers it seems. Just checked http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/
Now I have to learn how to install them...
@OP: I suggest you get info about your soundcard, then check directly the manufacturer website first.

EDIT2: ok their engineers made a simple install script and it compiles itself. I am very thankful for that.
But I don't see anything new after finishing the automatic install they provided. hmmmm...

[Dansk]

My soundcard, according to lspci, is an Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05). From what I've been able to find online, onboard Intel stuff is notorious for playing badly with Linux, so I'm not surprised I'm having this issue.

I know it's ALSA with the problem, but I don't know what to do about it. I tried installing OSS4 instead, but it turned out that OSS doesn't support this soundcard at all, and I had no sound whatsoever after doing that.

Then I discovered that OSS is a gigantic pain in the ass to remove from your computer and wouldn't leave no matter what I did--it actually kept re-installing itself automatically every time I thought I'd removed it--so I just formatted and re-installed Mint. Sound is working again, but I'm back to where I started from.

I may have found a solution, though. I tried looking in amixer to see what inputs and outputs showed up there, and it's showing a lot more than alsamixer does. I haven't had time to mess around and learn amixer's commands yet though, so I don't know if it'll work.

[glubbar]

Have you heard of or tried looking for JACK? Perhaps this could be of use (I'm not sure though)
http://jackaudio.org/

[Dansk]

I'm looking through it, but I can't quite figure out exactly what JACK does. It seems to be a software mixer, which is dandy, but if I can't unmute that microphone input then a mixer isn't going to do much...

I appreciate the suggestion, though!

[glubbar]

Have you looked for PulseAudio ? I actually think this one could help us out!
You should look for tutorials about it. Still a bit clueless myself though.

EDIT: @OP, I think it finally worked for me. I installed various packages related to PulseAudio from Linux Mint software manager (Look for PulseAudio Device chooser, PulseAudio Volume Control and possibly also things like paman and paprefs, pulseaudio, pavucontrol)

I'm fiddling with Linux Multimedia Studio (LMMS which I highly recommend!) to mess with my MIDI and Mic inputs, it seems to work fine, I can mix everything in one go in Audacity or even in Flash applets (ie stickam, ustream etc.) Of course it's not that simple and I had to experiment a lot with both the ALSA mixer and pamanager but you get the idea.

Those are the things that make me love Linux, and communities of coders.

2nd EDIT: I found that Gnome Alsa Manager did the trick of live mic playback! I simply unmuted the "mic" fader and I have realtime feedback of the mic input to my headphones!!
I'm now moving on to another issue of mine, to be able to stream any sound produced by any application running... oh boy. Good luck!

[yaye]

There's an option to mute or unmute the microphone, but this only affects the capture end of things, not playback. There's no microphone fader listed under playback in alsamixer.

So is there a way to get around this really irritating block on the microphone input? I'm not sure what else to try, I've done everything that I know how to do. I've never encountered a computer without the option to unmute the microphone before.

I became curious about this and started up my laptop, a Toshiba Satellite running Ubuntu 10.10 (Pulseaudio already installed). After logging in, I opened GNOME ALSA Mixer and found there was no Microphone fader. The laptop has a Realtek ALC268 audio chip. I searched around with Google and found this thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-878608.html

I followed the instructions in the post by deepesh and added the line:

Code: Select all

options snd-hda-intel model=toshiba

to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

I rebooted and after logging in, a fader for the microphone is now present in GNOME ALSA mixer. There is no mute button though.

Maybe adding: options snd-hda-intel model=hp (or hewlett-packard)

to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf may work. You should save a copy of the original alsa-base.conf file before editing it.

[Dansk]

Interesting, thanks guys! I'll give those things a shot when I have a chance, I've been busy the last few days and haven't had time to play around much. I'll report back with my results!

[Dansk]

I've tried both solutions and neither one works for me. I've done some further looking around, and I think the bottom line is that my soundcard is just too new. None of the documentation out there mentions it. I suppose I'll just have to wait for the software to catch up with my hardware...

[yaye]

I found this thread:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/337590

and this comment by Andres Suarez:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... comments/5

Hi,

Looks like I had a corrupted Gnome user session file, now volume controls work properly. Anyway, I've reinstalled everything to be sure, upgraded alsa libraries and I still need the "model=hp-dv5" option to make the sound work.

regards

That was in 2009. If you haven't tried it, try

Code: Select all

options snd-hda-intel model=hp-dv6

If that doesn't work, try:

Code: Select all

options snd-hda-intel model=hp-dv5

[Dansk]

Yeah, that was one of the pages that I found while looking around. I tried putting a few different models into alsa-base.conf, but none of them did what I was looking for. I suppose I could just try going through the entire list, one by one, but that could take years...

[d00med]

There's a Wine Asio driver. I couldn't get it installed, and couldn't get my mic jack working on my laptop, so I opted for one of these USB audio interfaces.

[Dansk]

I'm trying to install it but having lots of problems with dependencies and code errors. I'll get back to you if and when I get it working.

[yaye]

Yeah, that was one of the pages that I found while looking around. I tried putting a few different models into alsa-base.conf, but none of them did what I was looking for. I suppose I could just try going through the entire list, one by one, but that could take years...

Well, I'm out of ideas. Hope you get it working. Good luck.

[Dansk]

No problem, thanks for the help!

There's a Wine Asio driver. I couldn't get it installed, and couldn't get my mic jack working on my laptop, so I opted for one of these USB audio interfaces.

I need to buy one of those things anyways to feed my DAC. It's only capable of 48 kHz through USB, but it does 96 kHz through S/PDIF. Will the Behringer output 96 kHz over S/PDIF?

[yaye]

No problem, thanks for the help!

You're welcome.

[d00med]

No problem, thanks for the help!

There's a Wine Asio driver. I couldn't get it installed, and couldn't get my mic jack working on my laptop, so I opted for one of these USB audio interfaces.

I need to buy one of those things anyways to feed my DAC. It's only capable of 48 kHz through USB, but it does 96 kHz through S/PDIF. Will the Behringer output 96 kHz over S/PDIF?

No idea about that.