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Is there a guide somewhere on how to use the pi sound system? It would be good to have something definitive as there is lots of stuff out there that contradicts, and it is not like I want to do anything out of the ordinary.

I have two usb microphones, both appear in under the speaker menu on the top right hand corner of the screen, and yes I have maxed the volume in the device settings there. if I do arecord -d 5 -f S16_LE test.wav then, aplay test.wav I can hardly hear the recording using either microphone. It is recording - I can hear it. The play back is, I assume, fine as I can listen to things on the web.

After several hours surfing I get the impression one cannot set the record volume and there is a problem with my hardware??? A pi4 running buster.

Any help greatly appreciated, P

Petr
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  • Just tested another mic. Same problem. – Petr Nov 13 '20 at 18:07
  • found this page: http://wiki.sunfounder.cc/index.php?title=To_use_USB_mini_microphone_on_Raspbian but it is out of date; adjusting under the device settings under the audio icon on the rhs didn't change anything – Petr Nov 14 '20 at 10:20
  • tried this page:https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/90267/how-to-stream-sound-to-a-bluetooth-device-from-a-raspberry-pi-zero Under bluetoothctl the Device id keeps changing??? – Petr Nov 14 '20 at 10:37
  • best definitive site I found (2020) is https://pimylifeup.com/raspberrypi-microphone/ controls are working but still hardly audible – Petr Nov 14 '20 at 17:10
  • ALSA provides access to the hardware's mixer controls. What is the output of amixer -C x, where x is the card number? – CL. Nov 16 '20 at 21:40
  • amixer -c 1 gives "Simple mixer control 'Headphone',0
    Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joint

    Playbac channels: Mono

    Limits: Playback -10239 - 400
    Mono: Playback -2000 [77%] [-20.00dB] [on]

     – Petr Nov 17 '20 at 11:35
  • I want to use the microphone in conjunction with Google ASR and it turns out that Google ASR works fine with what appears to be very low volume. The above values btw are for a MPOW bluetooth headset so amixer does not seem to be able to find the microphone. I tried the -D option to no avail. Not sure how the low volume (apparently) affects other applications. – Petr Nov 17 '20 at 11:39
  • That device apparently has no recording volume control. You would have to modify the recorded file afterwards. – CL. Nov 17 '20 at 15:12

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