problem recording from USB microphone

Hello,
I have bought this cheap USB sound card http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/33367926/Portable-USB-2-0-3D-Virtual-5-1Channel-Pc-Sound-Card/Product.html to give my Pi a microphone input, it appears as expected in the list of USB devices:

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$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 028: ID 0d8c:000e C-Media Electronics, Inc. Audio Adapter (Planet UP-100, Genius G-Talk)


the microphone appears in the alsamixer as device 1: Card: Generic USB Audio Device, and I have increased the gain to just before it goes red. I have pugged a microphone into the mic socket and it appears on the list of capture devices in arecord:

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$  arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 1: Device [Generic USB Audio Device], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0


however, when I try to record something, I get errors:

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arecord -f S16_LE -d 20 -r 44100 -D hw:1,0 test.wav
Recording WAVE 'test.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Mono
arecord: set_params:1145: Unable to install hw params:
ACCESS:  RW_INTERLEAVED
FORMAT:  S16_LE
SUBFORMAT:  STD
SAMPLE_BITS: 16
FRAME_BITS: 16
CHANNELS: 1
RATE: 44100
PERIOD_TIME: (125011 125012)
PERIOD_SIZE: 5513
PERIOD_BYTES: 11026
PERIODS: (3 4)
BUFFER_TIME: 500000
BUFFER_SIZE: 22050
BUFFER_BYTES: 44100
TICK_TIME: 0



trying other methods from searching google also produces errors:

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$ arecord --duration=30 -vvvv -f S16_LE --file-type wav beggin.wav
arecord: main:682: audio open error: No such file or directory


Any ideas? thanks
Karl.

im having similar issues with just crackled noise. im trying to get mine to encode to mp3 and stream to shoutcast server/icecast.

testing the soundcard initially by piping the recording to the playback (all from the same usb audio device) like this:

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$ arecord -D hw:1,0 -f S16_LE -c 1 -r 44100 | aplay -D plughw:CARD=1,DEV=0

Did you find any solution to the quality issue? I'm using a similar setup and the audio is really quiet and the crackling is really bad

Hi,

I have met the same recording quality problem with USB microphone.

Sound is terrible - did You find a solution ???

Karol

My experience with C-Media chipsets is that they don't support every combination of formats and sampling rates. If you are still having audio quality programs, I would suggest that you try a sampling rate of 48000 and the default format (U8). This combination has worked for me in the past.

IM having problems with crackling too! I thought it was streaming with ffmpeg the problem,
but i used arecord and aplay and it crackles direct in .wav too

Im using a Daffodil USB soundcard. Anyone have any luck??

I am using a CMedia 6206-based sound module (a Sabrent USB SND8) to capture audio successfully to stream [from a VLF receiver (lightning, spherics) at http://67.207.143.181/vlf9.m3u] - but if I add a USB hub, it becomes unusable.

Are you using a hub?

Tom

I found a fix, apparently theres an issue with USB2 and our raspberry pi's that's well known and also being discussed in another thread, you have to add an argument in /boot/cmdline.txt to bring it to USB1 for the pack loss not to occur. But at the same time, if u put it to USB1, your usb keyboard stops working so you have to ssh into your raspberry

I was having problems with a CMedia device: http://dx.com/p/pd300-usb-super-microphone-115cm-cable-107053
When I tried to record the resulting file was completely silent.

I tried setting the USB to USB1 speed, didn't help.

I worked out that the microphone was muted (not the physical volume dial on it).

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ders@raspberrypi:~$ amixer
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined penum
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 65536
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 26251 [40%] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 26251 [40%] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
  Capabilities: cvolume cvolume-joined cswitch cswitch-joined penum
  Capture channels: Mono
  Limits: Capture 0 - 65536
  Mono: Capture 50309 [77%] [off]

Note that last [off].

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ders@raspberrypi:~$ amixer set Capture 100% cap
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
  Capabilities: cvolume cvolume-joined cswitch cswitch-joined penum
  Capture channels: Mono
  Limits: Capture 0 - 65536
  Mono: Capture 65536 [100%] [on]

Then I was able to record with the command mentioned elsewhere in this thread:
ders@raspberrypi:~$ arecord -D plughw:1,0 -r 48000 test.wav

try arecord -D hw:0,0
or
arecord -D hw:1,0