On Sun, 2008-11-23 at 21:51 +0100, Niki Kovacs wrote:

Hi,

Earlier this day I started a thread about Skype not working with outgoing sound. Now I wonder if it's not a problem with my soundcard. I had a vague suspicion about this, but since it's way off the original topic, I decided to start a new thread about this.

Here's what the soundcard looks like:

[root@grossebertha etc]# lspci | grep -i audio 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)

Actually plain sound (output) works OK. I can use XMMS, MPlayer, VLC and the likes without any problem.

On the other hand, when I try to record sound over the soundcard, the result is quite fuzzy, full of distortions. I tried to fiddle with alsamixer to get rid of the distortions, but to no avail. Here's what I did to record sound over the mic:

$ arecord > ~/test.wav

Give a try to the application I used in the thread I reference later in this reply. Also, have you used settings in arecord for different sample rates or whatever? Tried it with nice, inverted (i.e. increase priority rather than reduce priority)?

Now in the past I configured a laptop with an ICH sound card on it, a small ASUS. I spent like whole afternoons googling and searching through forums, until some day I stumbled over the solution. I had to add something to /etc/modprobe.conf, something like:

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel options snd-hda-intel model=3stack

... and all of a sudden sound worked.

Now maybe there is also a magic line for my new machine (a lenovo desktop PC) that makes the soundcard work correctly for the microphone? But where do I get that information? Guesswork? Google again for a week? Searching for "centos intel high definition sound" doesn't show much.

Since you are now worried about "fuzzy", I don't know if this will help, but in a thread you started previously,

Subject: Simple audio recording app

that starts here

http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2008-October/066938.html

in this reply

http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2008-October/066960.html

Did you try this

Make sure full duplex is enabled in the hardware tab. Open other desired things from the krec menu bar. I also opened the alsa mixer and made sure all appropriate channels (both in playback and capture tabs) are enabled.

The important things I think are the duplex setting and the mixer settings for enabled stuff.

As for the "fuzziness", since it is only with the microphone, in the tabs in the alsa mixer, any settings that might affect it? I don't recall if you confirmed the microphone is good. Have you confirmed somehow that the problems are not in that or its wires/connectors?

Since this kernel version does not have a preemptive scheduler, maybe you need to run minimal load while doing the skype stuff? Does top give a clue that maybe something is hogging the system? Are the Sample rates adjustable?

Beyond this, I can set up skype in my 5.x or 4.x (if available for 4.x?) and see what happens.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I'm guessing this is OT for the list. So if you would like to collaborate off-list, let me know. My time is limited during the day (EST zone) and I'm working on tax setup in gnucash, but I should be able to devote a little time off and on.

Cheers,

Niki

<snip sig stuff>

HTH