Fedora-7 rant #3: Sound

[Andy Green]

Timothy Murphy wrote:

> 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?

You're ranting about Alsa, not Fedora.  All the other modern distros use
Alsa too.

The core trick to recording stuff is to understand that the default pane
of controls in Alsamixer and kmix is only to do with playback.  If in
that pane you unmute Mic and turn it up, it will loop back the mic data
from the mic channel to the output without recording anything.  The
usual result of that is howling feedback.

What you want is in the second pane of alsamixer, which you get to with
a Tab key, this deals with the input sources.  You need to select a
recording source by using the left/right arrow keys to navigate to it a
space to enable it as an input source.  In kMix its the same deal with a
second tab pane having these controls and a circle above each source you
click on to select.

Sometimes what the driver reports about the mixer controls doesn't
reflect reality.  In these cases the wrong buttons and sliders do the
wrong job.  Most of the time though it does work after some meddling on
your part.

-Andy