cant record in gnome-sound-recorder, cant play sound in skype

With a default isntall of Ubuntu from intrepid and later, when you run skype, you should go to the audio preferences for skype and set your output to pulse, and set the input device to an input of your sound card, NOT default.

As for not recording in GNOME sound recorder, have you double checked the recording settings in System -> Preferences -> Sound to make sure its set to PulseAudio for recording?

The idea that each application needs to be re-configured before I can play/record sound is non-solution for ubuntu imo. Why can't the old "ALSA output/input remain as compatibility whilst redirecting to pulse behind the scenes?

Setting _BOTH_ the "Sound Out" and the "Ringing" options to "pulse" makes sound playback work again even using pulseaudio.

If I set "Sound In" to "Default", "HDA Intel (hw:intel,0)", "HDA Intel (plughw:intel,0)", "hdmi", "headset" then I see the "Problem with audio CAPTURE" message.

If I set "Sound In" to "HDA Intel (hw:intel,6)", "HDA Intel (plughw:intel,6)" I hear only silence when my message is played back to me.

After this I launched alsamixer from a terminal, and I pressed TAB to switch over to the CAPTURE related volume controls, and increased the "mic boost" to 50% (it was previously at 0%). This makes gnome-sound-recorder work, but not Skype. I also tried restarting Skype but no go, despite very high volume I can't hear a thing when my voice "is being played back to me".

Is there anything else I can try in order to get Skype working? I will e-mail the Skype devs for sure, but I mean other than that?

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Judging from your comments, which were at least partially "spot on", you must have seen this problem before. Clearly, it's a bad idea to have everyone go through this long frustrating process. Can't the defaults be setup smarter? For instance, can you set the "mic boost" to 50% my default for my soundcard/codec config?

I really believe "it works out of the box" should be our ambition here.

On Wed, Feb 04, 2009 at 03:50:29PM CET, martin wrote:
> The idea that each application needs to be re-configured before I can
> play/record sound is non-solution for ubuntu imo. Why can't the old
> "ALSA output/input remain as compatibility whilst redirecting to pulse
> behind the scenes?

In the case of skype, this has to do with the way skype talks to the default audio device, compared to how it talks to another alsa preset like what the pulse option is. Why, I can't answer this, because Skype is proprietary.

As for other applications, this is in fact what happens. However again there could be an issue in how some applications talk to a default sound device in alsa. that other

> Setting _BOTH_ the "Sound Out" and the "Ringing" options to "pulse"
> makes sound playback work again even using pulseaudio.
>
> If I set "Sound In" to "Default", "HDA Intel (hw:intel,0)", "HDA Intel
> (plughw:intel,0)", "hdmi", "headset" then I see the "Problem with audio
> CAPTURE" message.

Ok, make sure nothing else is using the input device, i.e you have no other recording applications open. PulseAudio will eventually let go of the input device if it has no need to retrieve data. This should allow skype to use the audio capture device. Why you have the HDMI choice for input though is beyond me, something to do with how badly skype is coded I guess.

> If I set "Sound In" to "HDA Intel (hw:intel,6)", "HDA Intel
> (plughw:intel,6)" I hear only silence when my message is played back to
> me.

Make sure you have your microphone set as the capture source in the mixer GUi. I can't tell you how to do this, because I don't use the GUI mixer myself, since I have no need to.

> After this I launched alsamixer from a terminal, and I pressed TAB to
> switch over to the CAPTURE related volume controls, and increased the
> "mic boost" to 50% (it was previously at 0%). This makes gnome-sound-
> recorder work, but not Skype. I also tried restarting Skype but no go,
> despite very high volume I can't hear a thing when my voice "is being
> played back to me".

Skype has a stupidity where it thinks its helping you by tweaking the capture settings when you start a call. Try watching alsamixer while you attempt to make a skype test call, and play with settings to see if you can get any sound back. Again, this is a skype problem.

> Is there anything else I can try in order to get Skype working? I will
> e-mail the Skype devs for sure, but I mean other than that?

Convince them to consider adding pulseaudio support. It will allow skype to play nicer in what is becoming more a common setup, i.e pulseaudio as the audio server, in more and more distros.

> Judging from your comments, which were at least partially "spot on", you
> must have seen this problem before. Clearly, it's a bad idea to have
> everyone go through this long frustrating process. Can't the defaults be
> setup smarter? For instance, can you set the "mic boost" to 50% my
> default for my soundcard/codec config?

Yes this has been seen many times, and in terms of skype, we can not do one single thing. As for the mic boost capture setting, this is also something that cannot be easily set for everyone due to possible...

Thank you for all the info Luke.

I also headed over to the Skype forum and found this very interesting thread about the pulseaudio/Skype regression.

There is several valuable comments from Skype staff about this issue there:
http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=112021&st=0&p=562131&#entry562131

This fix works for me:

add this code to ~/.asoundrc

pcm.skypeout
{
type plug
slave.pcm "dmix"
}
ctl.skypeout
{
type hw
card 0
}
pcm.skypein
{
type plug
slave.pcm "dsnoop"
}
ctl.skypein
{
type hw
card 0
}

and this to /etc/pulse/default.pa

load-module module-alsa-sink device=dmix sink_name=output
load-module module-alsa-source device=dsnoop

then log out and log in to X (to apply the new settings)

and finally set "skypein" in Skype -> Options -> sound devices -> Sound in

Can it be applied to somehow to jaunty?

That's not a fix, as it reverts to ALSA for asym - the opposite of what we want to do.

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 8.10 (intrepid) reached end-of-life on April 30, 2010.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

Please upgrade to the latest version and re-test.

[Expired for pulseaudio (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]