Fedora-7 rant #3: Sound

[Timothy Murphy]

I'm running F-7 with KDE,
and I'm trying to get Skype working.
My voice is not recorded on the Test call ...
I guess I should start by testing the built-in microphone.

But how?
The sound system seems designed for sound engineers,
not ordinary mortals.
What on earth do all these symbols in KMix mean?
(I've left clicked on the loudspeaker icon in my panel,
and clicked on Mixer.)

Whoever designed the sound GUI seemed to have a love affair with triangles.
What on earth do these half-filled in triangles mean?
And why do they have a smaller triangle beside them pointing to the right?
Why am I given no hint of their meaning when I hover over them?

And why does input have what looks like headphones as icon?

When I try the CLI command "alsamixer" instead
I get 19 (yes, 19) controls,
none of them properly labelled.
I see one called Mic, set to 0.
It isn't at all obvious how to change this, or any, setting,
but I go to the Mic icon with the right arrow key,
and then use the up arrow to go from 0 to 81.
Was that a good idea?
I cannot tell, as I have no idea how to test the result.

Is there a simple introduction to Fedora sound somewhere?

When I get a new mobile phone, I take it out of the box,
put in a SIM card and it works.
There aren't 19 switches to adjust.

I bought a DVD player yesterday.
I connect it to my TV with a Scart connector,
switch on and put in a DVD.
I am asked one question - do I want to play the DVD?
I answer Yes, and it plays.

Sigh.



-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland