On Sunday 20 Jul 2014 16:42:15 Alexander Kapshuk wrote:
> Howdy,
> 
> I'm having trouble configuring my sound card so as to be able to record
> voice as well as talk on Skype.
> 
> Whenever I try recording my voice using arecord, or do a Skype test
> call, the audio output I get is static and squeaky.
> 
> I went through the instructions described here,
> http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ALSA, and set things up where applicable as
> best as I could tell.
> 
> Here's the details of my current setup:
> Sound card:
> 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio
> Controller (rev 02)
>     Subsystem: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd Device a002
>     Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
> 
> ALSA packages installed:
> media-libs/alsa-lib-1.0.27.2
> media-plugins/alsa-plugins-1.0.27-r1
> media-plugins/gst-plugins-alsa-0.10.36
> media-sound/alsa-utils-1.0.27.2
> 
> cat .asoundrc
> defaults.pcm.!card Intel
> defaults.pcm.!device 0
> 
> What else am I missing here?

I don't have an .asoundrc file in my ~ for years now (I thought that it was 
deprecated for typical desktop use?).

When I bought my last laptop I found that it had analogue and digital capture 
and I got good results after I switched off the analogue capture altogether.  
Also, I had to lower the volume of the digital capture to get best results.  I 
did all this with alsamixer.

The world is moving to pulseaudio and perhaps you want to give it a spin.  It 
may offer a better interface for managing your audio - although in my case it 
doesn't because I don't use Gnome and don't want to install half of it just to 
manage my sound.

HTH.
-- 
Regards,
Mick