How does one record audio?

[andi payn]

On Sun, 2003-10-26 at 08:02, RexFelis wrote:
> I am using FreeBSD 5.1-p10, and recently I have
> need to record spoken sounds.

As DavidB said, the fact that it no longer works in linux implies that
you might have a hardware problem--with the sound card, or even with the
mic.  (Is this the same mic you used in linux? Otherwise, it may just be
something simple, like impedance or preamping.)

However, there's one more easy possibility to check: Make sure the mic
isn't muted. From aumix, or your favorite oss mixer app (I think this is
what kmix is, if I remember correctly), and check/play with the level
and mute settings for mic, record, line in, or anything else that looks
like an input. In addition to the level and mute settings, you may also
see a "record source" setting--with most setups, you can select exactly
one recording source, so try selecting each of them in turn; with
others, each one can be turned on and off separately. You may also have
a "master record" level and mute setting to play with.

While you're at it, see if you can record from the CD (through the
soundcard, assuming you have an audio connection--generally a little
2-pin cable--between the two; digital CD audio extraction won't tell you
anything useful).

You may also want to look at the sysctl settings to see if anything
looks fishy. Try "sysctl -a |grep snd" to look at what knobs you have
and what they're set to. I've noticed that when I have
hw.snd.pcm0.vchans set to anything >1, this sometimes interferes with
audio input (but then I'm not sure my ancient fm801 is full-duplex).

If fiddling with the mixer and sysctl produces no effect, you're
probably best testing either in Windows, as DavidB said, or with a clean
copy of linux (maybe even use a different distro).

By the way, if you're not sure which sound card you have, use lspci
(/usr/ports/sysutils/pciutils--or run the binary from your linux distro,
or reboot to linux) and it should tell you something like this:

  00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: Falcotronic, Inc Komissar 2000
[CHA] (rev b23)

This implies (though it doesn't guarantee) that the driver you need is
snd_cha--and it provides enough information that some helpful soul can
tell you exactly which driver you need. However, most likely this won't
help; if the sound output is working, the correct driver is probably
already being loaded as a module (scan kldstat's output for snd_*.ko).