[PlanetCCRMA] alsamixer step complete, but . . . .

[Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano]

> Anyway, I unloaded the asound.state file, then ran alsaconf, then
> alsamixer, then saved to asound.state, then, and this is the best part,
> I loaded the canary1.wav file (my system doesn't have a soundfile.wav
> file), and both cats (I have a mother and one of her kittens) came to
> attention!!!  :)

Wow.. :-) Glad to hear you got the canaries going :-) Now you'll have to
cat-proof your speakers...

> Now, when I ran alsamixer, since I have no idea what any of those
> thingys mean, I decided to run 100 on everything I could.  I ran into a
> glitch with the cheap microphone when I loaded up the capture r l
> thingy, so that's set really low.  The background noise is quite a lot,
> as Fernando indicates in the instructions, so I will have to adjust the
> settings.  Where do I go to find out more about settings with
> alsamixer?  I have been to the alsamixer site, but what I need to find
> out about, is what the different items are, what they do, and why I want
> to set them at whatever setting.  does that make sense?  In other words,
> without a starting point other than 0, it's a lot of trial and error.

Hmmm, I don't think those things are described anywhere. I may be wrong.
Each soundcard is different, even different versions of the same
soundcard may have slightly different controls. The SBLive is (I think)
more confusing than most because of the number of options it has. 

It _may_ (just may) be better to use a GUI mixer, I find it less
confusing than the alsamixer ncurses interface. Try starting "gamix".
Anyway, that will not solve the basic problem of knowing what each
control does, although in most cases the names are self-explanatory. 

-- Fernando