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  1. Ok, found the problem. My sound card doesn't support PCM capture. I got audio from line capture but that's too quiet to be practical. I'm gonna have to either figure out how to set up a loopback or cave in and actually use pulseaudio. I really, really hope I don't have to do the latter.

    Thursday, 01-Nov-12 06:30:50 UTC from web
    1. @toksyuryel And by "sound card" I of course mean "onboard audio chip"

      Thursday, 01-Nov-12 06:31:51 UTC from web
    2. @toksyuryel hold on, what sound are you trying to capture? I might be able to help.

      Thursday, 01-Nov-12 06:33:41 UTC from web
      1. @mashuga31 I'd like to capture whatever audio happens to be playing at the moment from my sound card. I am using alsa.

        Thursday, 01-Nov-12 06:35:00 UTC from web
        1. @toksyuryel ok this is going to sound like a really retarded question but trust me - do you have speakers that play sound from your sound card?

          Thursday, 01-Nov-12 06:36:09 UTC from web
          1. @mashuga31 Just headphones.

            Thursday, 01-Nov-12 06:36:36 UTC from web
            1. @toksyuryel that may still work. I'm not sure of alsa's configuration settings, what operating system you're running, or what your operating system's current configured sound settings are - but using the freeware program audacity, you can set the recording device as 'Stereo Mix' which records the audio that is being played through your speakers with impeccable quality.

              Thursday, 01-Nov-12 06:38:24 UTC from web
              1. @mashuga31 Alright, where do I find this "stereo mix" option? It's only giving me the same capture options I get from alsamixer (namely: front mic, rear mic, line, and cd)

                Thursday, 01-Nov-12 06:49:26 UTC from web
                1. @toksyuryel alright, what operating system are you running? If it's 7, you're going to have to enable it. (Actually your setup sounds very similar to RealTek's sound managing hell I have to deal with. But if thats the case then at least Im a bit familair with it.)

                  Thursday, 01-Nov-12 06:51:20 UTC from web
                  1. @mashuga31 Yeah the driver is RealTek ALC889. As for my OS, I'm running Gentoo Linux.

                    Thursday, 01-Nov-12 06:52:25 UTC from web
                    1. @toksyuryel curses. i've never even booted up a Linux OS. There's a kind of control panel I would imagine though. Find your sound settings and we'll work from there.

                      Thursday, 01-Nov-12 06:54:30 UTC from web
                      1. @mashuga31 Nope, there's no control panel. Alsamixer is how I fiddle with my sound settings.

                        Thursday, 01-Nov-12 06:55:11 UTC from web
                        1. @toksyuryel How do people even deal with things in linux? >_> A 'loopback' sounds like it might be something similar. But I just did a quick google search and found other people with similar problems.

                          Thursday, 01-Nov-12 06:58:15 UTC from web
                          1. @mashuga31 Very carefully. But nah every Linux-based OS is different, and every user is also different. I would have something resembling a control panel if I had opted to install a desktop environment like KDE or GNOME, but I don't feel any need or desire to do so because I can get everything done without one and they make a lot of assumptions about me I don't appreciate.

                            Thursday, 01-Nov-12 07:01:14 UTC from web
                            1. @toksyuryel but you seem like you're on the right track. curiosity should push you to the answer soon enough.

                              Thursday, 01-Nov-12 07:03:01 UTC from web
                              1. @mashuga31 If anything, this conversation has made me more confident this is the answer.

                                Thursday, 01-Nov-12 07:03:37 UTC from web
                            2. @toksyuryel I wish i could help more. But if you do figure it out, i'd appreciate it if you could spread the word somehow. The only solutions i could find to other peoples problems so far require a bunch of unnecessary downloads all ultimately just being an indirect and non-definitive answer. Which aggravates me a bit. :P

                              Thursday, 01-Nov-12 07:04:46 UTC from web
                              1. @mashuga31 Most people I think take the "easy" way out and just use pulseaudio. But there is nothing "easy" about pulseaudio and I'll do everything in my power to never have to install it.

                                Thursday, 01-Nov-12 07:06:01 UTC from web
                      2. @mashuga31 If I had to guess, this "stereo mix" option Windows has is probably the same thing as the loopback I was talking about earlier.

                        Thursday, 01-Nov-12 06:56:15 UTC from web
                      3. @mashuga31 Yeah actually looking at some of the information I'd been reading, one person mentions "You need to set the ALSA loopback interface to stereo mixer to loop the output to your input channel." so it is in fact exactly the same thing.

                        Thursday, 01-Nov-12 06:58:19 UTC from web
                        1. @toksyuryel lol. taking nothing from the system.

                          Thursday, 01-Nov-12 07:02:27 UTC from web