alsamixer mic activation tip with mini tutorial

[aus9]

screenshot
https://i.postimg.cc/BQVLRzgk/mic.png

Ok I am rebuilding recordmydesktop on x86_64 and thought I would share what I know about mic activation in alsamixer using my tower that has a front mic and a back mic.   I am aware that you may have a simpler hardware with just one mic. In screenshot I have left out the way to get to each control. Which is ....press  the right arrow or left arrow keys....but you first start as per screenshot at the left control. If pulseaudio or  pipewire is NOT controlling your sound device then run

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alsamixer -V capture
If either pulseaudio or pipewire is controlling your device  run

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aplay -l That is a lower case L for lima...and look to see what your card number your device is called if you use HDMI out or analog out and for me that is card 0 (zero) So run

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alsamixer -V capture -c 0  If you are not sure...just try various numbers stop after 4 most people do not have more than 4 sound devices.

Next.....for either of above ..... arrow to each mic you find....and press the space bar  to activate it or de-activate
Then you need to arrow to the input source.....and make it either the front or back mic.

Now if you have a laptop or a netbook....it is unlikely you have two 3.5mm input ports.
You may have a combination of one input that is both a mic and headphone port
OR
one input (or combined input/output) and an internal mic ....your laptop manual will tell you where the little hole is.
So you can choose to deactivate the internal if you prefer a nicer gaming headphone/mic setup
or deactivate the mic input and activate the internal mic input YMMV

If you have a tower with two 3.5mm  controls they are "paired"  so the left mic capture needs either front or back capture enabled in the other control....much easy to see in screenshot which I have made permanent while free host site allows such.

So in screenshot you would be crazy to have 2 mics trying to be front mic when one is a back mic.
I did that just to show I am crazy Hehe

If you have a laptop/netbook with both an internal mic and an input mic they may have the controls in a different setup that you will need to test

Avoid trying to increase mic boost as per screenshot. It is more likely to lead to distortion on cheaper mic inputs. Especially inbuilt internal mics.  High end mics test as below and only boost if you can not hear yourself.

I have left out how to make output louder as I assume you know how to do that already

Ideally before doing anything important test your mic please.
I suggest a short 5 second test and then playback to see if good

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arecord -d 5 test.wav
aplay test.wav
or use your fav player to playback  test.wav

Good luck

[aus9]

oops I wrote:

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aplay -lwhich is OK but

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arecord -l is more accurate

2) Now above I was using alsa where card 0 was my analog device as I had disabled HDMI

for HDMI users where they want to use analog I had to do this...if card 0 is HDMI which is for all of my hardware that I have used on Linux

make a test file

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arecord -d 5 -D plughw:1,0 test.wav
aplay -D plughw:1,0 test.wav Where capital D means device while lowercase d is duration

    [Edit]: Wrapped  aplay -l  in code tags.  Rich

[Rich]

Hi aus9
I added some code tags to your post because lower case el
and upper case eye are almost indistinguishable from each
other without them.

Here they are alternated without code tags:
l I l I

Here they are alternated with code tags:

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l I l I

[aus9]

thanks Rich In my original post I did try to mention capital L for lima but fair comment