Cannot mute microphone with Sound Blaster Live!

As far as I know this issue appears on Ubuntu 5.04 and 5.10

I get this on Dapper Drake as well with my Sound Blaster live.

Note that the problem dissapears if the on board sound card is disabled in the bios.
It could be a good turnaround for people who use only one sound card like me.

Filed as bug # 0008278 with the ALSA bugtracking system.
This also affects the "line in" input.
I have confirmed that booting back into 5.04 cures the problem, so it is
something that crept into 5.10.
There is also a tread in the ubuntu user form titled "Breezy, SB LIve Alsa
Problem, can't mute line in capture"

If possible, please upgrade to Dapper's 2.6.15-9 kernel. If you do not want to
upgrade to Dapper, then you can also try the Dapper Flight 2 CD's:
http://cdimage.ubuntulinux.org/releases/dapper/flight-2/

Let me know if this bug still exists with this kernel.

Hi, yes it does appear to exist still with 2.6.15-8-386---unfortunately, I can't run
2.6.15-9-386 because everything exzcept my mouse freezes after Gnome logs in.

I tried the workaround mentioned above by turning off my onboard AC97 audio... just to realize that I had already turned it off. It doesn't seem to help in my case.

Not sure if this will help or not...
I went into the Gnome volume control and switched over to OSS and muted the microphone there. This seemed to mute the mic in all applications, which worked. However, it has a side effect of making the output audio sound kind of twangy and metallic.

If found out the following:
If I mute AC97 in Alsa-Mixer, the Microphone is silent. But I must not mute AC97 Capture...

The Problem is, that gnome-volume-control does not recognize the difference between those 2 channels.

The preferences show AC97 twice, but whichever I check to be shown, it allways shows AC97Capture... Even if I check both, it shows only one AC97 and it's capture.

So dear developers, this is a hint...

If you have an 'Analog Mix' or 'AC97' mixer element(s) for your SB Live, setting the Playback to 0 and muting both (or the relevant existing one for your codec) should resolve this issue.

Not a g-m bug.

@Penguinz, the bug # you mentioned is invalid.

@everyone, please attach your amixer output.

I'm closing this bug report as no further information has been provided.
Please feel free to reopen this bug if you can provide the information asked for.
Thanks!

Hello All! I have the same problem on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron.

Even when closing all apps, the microphone is working (if I tap it, I can hear it). I have tried all volume controls in gnome-volume-control and alsamixer (here the Mic is muted, but there is still sound in the speakers when I tap the mic). None of the line-in or mic volume controls have impact on sound volume. The only exception is Mic Boost which does boost the microphone volume.

All audio output is fine.. When I tried Skype with default settings, it gave me "Problem with audio playback". If I set all devices (Sound in, sound out, Ringing) to "SBLive! Value [CT4780] (hw: Live, 0)" than it works, but mic volume is very low.

System info:
I am running Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

Uname:
Linux hal2 2.6.24-19-generic #1 SMP Wed Aug 20 22:56:21 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

My card is:
Card SBLive! Value [CT4780]
Chip: TriTech TR28602

Does anyone have suggestion on what to do?

I have same issue on JJ 9.04 64bit edition.

I have also been unable to mute the mic on Ubuntu 9.04. But I muted playback in another device that is present in the sound control (Capture: SB Live 5.1 - ADC Capture/Standard PCM Playback (PulseAudio Mixer) and it worked, so it seems that ALSA is not guilty here. However, running, e.g., Gnome Sound Recorder turns this playback on again and does not switch it off upon quiting. I think the Recorder ought not behave like this.