I downloaded Skype the other day at the urging of my daughter (she has a Microsoft Vista Dell Laptop that has a built-in video camera). I had tried using it a couple of years ago on Windows but did not have a reason for using it at the time, all the kids were still home. Now we have two girls in college and one in the US Marines so now I have a good reason to look at it again.
I chose to download it from the Skype web site even though I learned today, I believe I could have just as well installed it from the Medibuntu (I installed it from there on my work ThinkPad T61P). When I used it for the first time with my daughter (she is attending college at Iowa State University, go Cyclones!), video worked fine between the two machines but my daughter was not able to hear anything I said. To say the least, the conversation was a bit one-sided. I told my daughter I would work on getting it fixed so we could have a better experience with Skype the next time. me
I started debugging by looking at the Gnome volume applet and sure enough, the microphone was not listed on the mixer. When I enabled the microphone, it was of course muted. Now I thought this would work but when I tried the Skype Test Call contact, I could hear nothing. I tried a number of other settings in Skype for the audio but they did not work (I am running Ubuntu 8.10 and PulseAudio is what all my audio works with on Skype and other applications). I then tried enabling the Mic Boost in the Gnome volume applet and set it at its highest level. When I tried the Skype Test Call again, I could barely hear my voice so it looked like I was making progress.
I always remember reading about people using the console mode alsamixer control to fix lots of audio problems. I always think it should not work because I am configured to use PulseAudio server and not the Alsa audio server. When I brought up alsamixer, it only showed me one playback device at 100% and one capture device at 0%. I increased the capture device to 78% and when I ran a Skype Test Call, I could hear myself very well. I can't wait to call my daughter, I'm sure she will be pleased to hear my voice!
1 comment:
Just a follow up. I did a reinstall of Ubuntu 8.10 on this machine (bigger added 250gb hard disk, yes!). Anyway, of course Skype and the microphone did not work after doing the steps I outlined above. Here is what I had to do:
Add the following 3 lines to /etc/pulseaudio/daemon.conf:
default-fragments = 5
default-fragment-size-msec = 25
realtime-scheduling = yes
I also created a ~/.asoundrc file with the following:
pcm.!default {
type pulse
}
ctl.!default {
type pulse
}
pcm.pulse {
type pulse
}
ctl.pulse {
type pulse
}
I used the following command to kill pulseaudio:
killall pulseaudio
I used the following command to restart it:
pulseaudio -D
Finally, from a command line, I ran alsamixer and made sure the Capture device was up to at least 84%. If I made it 100%, the Skype echo test resulted in crackly sounds from my microphone.
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