How does one record voice from a USB-Mic? SOLVED

[mikeslr]

I know that voice recording can be done with my hardware as I'm able to use DragonNaturally Speaking under Windows 7. But I figured under Puppys I'd like to use voice search under Google-Chrome or record and transfer the recording to Windows where Dragon can transcribe it. I couldn't find anything in the Instructional HowTo Section; or anywhere else.

I'm posting from Fossapup64; but can easily boot-up in any of several 'Ubuntu' Puppies. I don't know what information is needed to resolve this question. Please advise.

What I need is Step-by-Step instructions. At any rate, if you have any good ideas please post to the 'HowTo' Section as 'recipes' are likely applicable regardless of which Puppy is being run.

While we're at it, maybe some recommendations about software; maybe something simple to test that the system is working; and more fleshed-out for actual use.

[Trapster]

Try mhWaveEdit?

[mikeslr]

Thanks, Trapster. mhWaveEdit was a simple 1-deb download; seems to be working with easy/intuitive controls via the taskbar. Much less confusing than audacity. But nothing is being recorded.

How does one configure alsa/retrovol/whatever? What I need is a recipe to configure the software to work with the hardware.

[bigpup]

In Retrovol, got any mic selections, are they enabled. and volume set?

[geo_c]

Thanks, Trapster. mhWaveEdit was a simple 1-deb download; seems to be working with easy/intuitive controls via the taskbar. Much less confusing than audacity. But nothing is being recorded.

How does one configure alsa/retrovol/whatever? What I need is a recipe to configure the software to work with the hardware.

mhWaveEdit, I'm not sure if that is similar to gWaveEdit which is stock in Fossapup. But gWaveEdit should do the job.

1) right click on the retrovol icon in the tray and choose: multiple sound card wizard to choose your default device. Highlight the device and then choose the Select card/device button.

The main question for recording is what mic are you going to use? If it's a laptop there may be one built in, if not you'll need to choose an external one. Multiple sound card wizard will set Alsa to the default audio device for the system, other devices present can be chosen in software packages, like Zoom. For instance, my default system speakers may be the laptops native sound card, but from within the zoom application I can choose the microphone built into my outboard camera instead of the laptop mic.

2) after choosing the default audio device you can test it from the same screen to play puppy's bark by choosing Test Sound if it plays, you know that the playback is working.

3) Now from the same screen highlight your chosen device and click configure. You will get a text based AlsaMixer v1.2.2 that should have all of your available settings for playback and audio input, adjusted with function keys and arrows, etc. See if there are mic settings that can be adjusted.

4) Now boot up WaveEdit. Go to menu>edit>preferences and view the sound tab. There you can choose your ALSA driver if not already chosen, and look at the settings with the settings button. This is the part that's not user friendly in wave edit. But I am sticking with built in Fossapup applications for the time being. Pressing the settings button in gWaveEdit will give you a dialog with a field to name your playback device, and recording device, which will be something like 'default' or 'hw:0' or 'hw:1' depending on how your system is configured and what's plugged into it. This information can be found by right clicking the retrovol icon in the tray and choosing settings>hardware and looking at the field labeled Sound Card. Mine is currently hw:0

5) Once you can tell gWaveEdit what the recording device is, you should be able to go to menu>Play>record which will give you a choice of recording sample format. Once that is chosen you should see some little old school looking VU meters and measurements of incoming volume. At the bottom is the Start recording button.

[mikewalsh]

I also occasionally use Google voice search (I confess, I'm pleasantly surprised it works as well as it does in Linux!)

I use the mic on my SoMiC headset. I put together my own custom, "hot-swap" audio card changer for changing between default internal card and headset (the USB wireless dongle has its own card built-in; this makes things easier), which doesn't require a re-boot between changes - uses 'overwrites' of each device's ~/.retrovolrc file, and an OK via the MultipleSoundCardWizard. Works a treat; been using this for around 18 months, I'd guess.

The nice thing about Chrome itself is that it will recognise every audio device/sub-device on your system, and give the option for what to use. Not all the 'clones' will honour this!

Unfortunately, although I can use the microphones "live" (video-calls work fine), the Realtek audio chip point-blank refuses to let me record anything.... (*grrrr..!!*) Despite it saying "loopback mixing" is present, it doesn't in fact DO anything..!

(*sigh*)

--------------------------------------------

@mikeslr :-

Probably the simplest thing I've ever come across for voice recording in Puppy is an extremely simple .pet Smokey01 put together, several years ago; "svr" - Simple Voice Recorder. It makes use of the built-in ALSA functions, 'aplay' & 'arecord'....and I believe it's a 'no-arch' package.

It lets you start recording, then stop recording; start playback, then stop playback. The wee GUI has four big, clear buttons to implement these. And that's it. Its only downside is that playback seems to be a bit on the quiet side, though that may be 'fixable' by perhaps changing something in the script/config? Don't know; I've never actually bothered to look.

I've attached it here, in case you want to give it a try. (I'm a bit of a 'pack-rat'; I've downloaded tons of Puppy stuff over the years, and I tend to hang onto everything!)

PS:- Most USB audio devices these days seem to have their own audio chips built-in to them, somewhere...which in practice means that, once selected, the device's card will show its own controls under Retrovol.

Mike.

[JASpup]

How does one configure alsa/retrovol/whatever?

That's apparently the issue, the driver required to get your USB mic working in Linux. It's not a common solution. Otherwise I've been at the hurdle of choosing the correct inputs/outputs when none are clearly defined and the selections overfill the screen.

If you can get a mic working, recognition works in Google Docs:
https://support.google.com/docs/answer/4492226?hl=en

My 32-bit 7 netbook has an effective builtin tool that I prefer while the mic is also plug-n-play, so my imagination now revolves about having that in a virtual machine.

[puddlemoon]

It may (probably) be the case that alsa needs the usb device to be the selected soundcard (which makes monitoring a no go). Alsa can't, that I know of use more than one at a time . That is where pulseaudio comes in.
When using jack (which is still using alsa), I need to use a small app to add usb (or any other) soundcard to the mix manually. I don't know of a way without jack

[geo_c]

It may (probably) be the case that alsa needs the usb device to be the selected soundcard (which makes monitoring a no go). Alsa can't, that I know of use more than one at a time . That is where pulseaudio comes in.
When using jack (which is still using alsa), I need to use a small app to add usb (or any other) soundcard to the mix manually. I don't know of a way without jack

Perhaps @mikewalsh's Zoom portable package would be an easy solution. Because Zoom seems to be able to find all the devices and use them simultaneously, and it records both video and audio. That being said it seems to me that gWaveEdit has the same capability, the ability choose different input and output devices. So with the output set to default and the input set to the USB mic, monitoring may be easily achievable. Really one should probably only want to monitor playback and not recording.

[Geek3579]

I have had issues with audio input with puppies over the years and they can generally be solved, but not always easily. A good exception is BionicPup64 has no problems picking up a USB mic (+camera) with ZOOM.

However, when I need to use audio for more dedicated tasks, such as input/output from a soundcard, video grabber, bluetooth and so on I use a variant of dpupbuster64 OS with inbuilt pulseaudio - usually with JWM, as it is so fast and reliable. Always seems to connect input and output without too many issues. And I can easily record system audio eg from a website/webradio using ffmpeg which I have never achieved with an alsa-only puppy OS.

I am aware some people in the forum turn their noses up at pulseaudio and I can appreciate their viewpoint, but despite providing sometimes too many configuration and other options (+ confusion), thats better than too few options if you are working with an audio project. (Quickpup64 might also be a suitable audio OS candidate)

[mikeslr]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the replies. With them, and some experimentation while also running Pup-SysInfo, my best guess at this time is that to record sound I have to first use the multiple-sound-card wizard to select C-Media USB Audio Device built into the mic as the source. The problem is that the mic is a 'stand-alone' without a component for generating sound. With C-Media USB Audio selected, the display on both mhwavedit and gWaveEdit show that something is being recorded: i.e., there are peeks and shallows rather than a continuous straight line. However, I can't test that something was in fact recorded --and especially how accurately-- without first saving the product to a file, and re-configuring multiple-sound-card-wizard to use a different sound card so that I can play the recording.

Not a very user-friendly system. The mic might be usable if I install pulse-audio which, I think, might be configurable to simultaneously use two sound cards; but which even those who know what they are doing have been reluctant to play with.

A much simpler solution is the replace the mic with one that uses the computer's internal sound card; or with the head-set which came with Dragon Naturally Speaking. I think I've got the former and know I have the latter.

[OscarTalks]

It is important to understand that the USB mic will appear as a different soundcard on the system
In alsa, the default soundcard is hw:0 so the USB mic will probably be seen as hw:1 or hw:2
Also remember that capture (record) settings are a different bunch from the playback settings
Really, you don't want to use Multiple Soundcard Wizard because that would set the USB mic as default soundcard
You don't want to keep having to switch the default, that would not make sense
Each program (application) should have its own device selection within its preferences dialog
So with chromium browsers you should be able to set USB mic as capture device and leave main soundcard selected for playback
Same with mhWaveEdit, but you may have to type in the hw:1 if it does not appear as a drop-down option for alsa
Audio capture levels can be set in retrovol (change to hw:1 in the config window)
Or try alsamixer, with soundcards and capture settings being selected by F keys (see the prompts)
By the way, personally I use pRecord as this saves directly as mp3

[mikewalsh]

@mikeslr :-

I tend to agree with Oscar about the way this stuff shows up.

I normally leave the default system card set "as-is", so it always feeds out to the powered speaker system's amp line-in. I also tend to leave the Logitech webcam's stereo mikes set as the default 'recording' device, though for this I set the levels using alsamixer.

You should be able to do this with your USB microphone, leaving the in-built system audio as default, followed by selecting the USB mike as the 'input', 'capture' or 'recording' device in the application's settings, where appropriate.

Too many Puppians see the capture level sliders in Retrovol, and are convinced that the only available way is to use an analog microphone, plugged in to the 'Mic' socket, and spend ages farting about trying to find that 'sweet spot' on the 'Capture' slider where things sound as good as they're going to get.

Fortunately, modern digital audio devices have progressed beyond that point, and are in fact quite simple to use.....very often having their own 'card' built-in, so it's simply a case of selecting it as & when required. Remember, Retrovol & the 'Puppy way' of handling audio still hasn't really changed from the early days, prior to the appearance on the market of much of this modern, easy-to-use audio equipment.

I could share my personal, custom 'hot-swap' audio card switcher, if you like. Initially, it's a bit fiddly to get just right, but once set-up & edited correctly, it works for ever more without fuss...... All it basically does is to store a copy of the ~/.retrovolrc file for each audio device you use. This is swapped to the relevant copy when selected in the GUI, then you finish off by selecting it as the default card.....the difference being that this way doesn't require a re-boot/restart to initialize it, so card swaps are quick & painless.

Up to you, mate.

Mike.

[mikeslr]

I'm having 'one of those days'. Will revisit the posts since my last when I'm not. Thanks OscarTalks and MikeWalsh.

[peppyy]

In the past I have found that Audacity finds devices easily. Might be worth a try?

desktop(1).jpg (84.82 KiB) Viewed 1032 times

I have a cheep usb to xlr cable I got years ago for my performance mics.(Audio Technica ATM91) They show up as soon as I plug them in. I am currently using the Audacity appimage version 2.0.5glibc-2.15 appimage.

Haven't used it in a while though because I haven't been doing much recording lately.

[mikeslr]

What may have been a migraine --thought I only got those in Florida just before a storm-- has cleared.

Thanks, peppyy. Audacity found the mic without anything more complicated than my having to figure out how to use Audacity's Menu: Edit>Preferences>Devices>Recording>Click Scroll>Select. And a different device can be selected via that GUI for playback. Audacity even warned me to Export rather than Save if I wanted to playback using a different application.

Now to see if I can follow MikeWalsh's advice regarding setting up a voice search via a web-browser.

[peppyy]

@mikeslr I think I have used Audacity since it came out. Used it to record my albums and mix sound for videos. I usually import from my Tascam portable recorder.

BTW, It has a pulldown menu for input and output. Easy Peasy

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[mikeslr]

Well, that was easy enough. See https://support.google.com/chrome/answe ... d=1#change. Once I get to 'microphone', a drop-down scroll-arrow offered a choice of devices among which was my USB-mic.
Also helps to have an extension such as "Voice Search".

[Flash]

@mikeslr So, was it Audacity or Chrome that solved the problem? Or both together? Or either one?

[mikeslr]

@mikeslr So, was it Audacity or Chrome that solved the problem? Or both together? Or either one?

Both, individually. Audacity made it easy to record 'dictation'; but was not used nor needed in order to conduct web-searches using google-chrome. All google-chrome needed was the installation of the 'voice-search' extension and that settings be configured to allow it to use the mic per my previous post. Might not even needed the extension: I had installed it before the above posts set me in the right direction. See below.

By the way. I could only conduct a voice-search using Google-Chrome, itself. I tried all these clones: brave, iron, opera, vivaldi, slimjet, MSEdge, ungoogled-chromium. Should have taken MikeWalsh's word. 'Mozillas' don't even offer the possibility. I haven't tried chromium, yet.

Edit: Just tried Chromium installed via Fossapup64's quickpet. It looked promising: had "mic" in Search-bar and allowed me to select the USB-Mic. But didn't work even after configuring to always allow. Voice-Search extensions wouldn't install. Sometimes you just have to go with what google intended; or not go at all.

Edit2: Puppians, don't feel you're being slighted. I booted into Window 7. Under that OS the only web-browser I could get to use my mic was google-chrome. And its search box sported a microphone even without my having to add the voice-search extension.

[mikewalsh]

@mikeslr :-

TBH, Mike, I don't see the need to install this, what was it....."VoiceSearch" extension?

AFAIK, the main Google search-engine page has, for some years now, had a prominent microphone icon just to the immediate right of the text-entry box in the centre of the page. Click on this, wait until it tells you to, then talk.....

(To set a specific device as default in Chrome; Menu->Settings->Privacy & Security->Site Settings->Microphone, then select your device from the drop-down menu, top left.)

Mike.