How to record very faint sound from the analogue input?

[Dotan Cohen]

> I am going back again to the basic question. What are you trying to
> do?

I am trying to record telephone (landline) conversations.


> Can you make a normal Skype like mic work with your system?

Yes, a normal 3.5" mono microphone works fine.


> Taking
> a skype style mic, you can open up the bit by the mouth and take out
> that very little mic without hurting the wires and shove it with some
> silicon glue into a stethoscope right before it splits to the two
> ears. With this you can do all sorts of fun stuff.
>

Yes, I suppose that I could simply hot-glue that mic to an earpiece
speaker. I would prefer a solution more elegant, or less contrived.
With this, I would need an entire donor phone and would manually have
to pick it up / hang it up for each call.


> My other thought is that I think my router manual said I could use it
> to shunt the phone signal into my computer. I am not sure of this
> because my German sucks and my manual is in German as is the router
> software. If you can't do that, I bet you can buy a device that can. I
> know that back in the ealy 90s I had a phone modem that could do this
> and I used my XP system as my answering machine. It was a cheep modem
> BTW and it worked great.
>

This laptop does have an internal modem, but I have googled for a way
to record voice from it and found nothing. Apparently there exist
Windows software for the purpose, but the modem must supoort it anyway
I don't have Windows.


> Have you tested that devices output by trying it as an input to your
> stereo or computer speaker system?

It is very faint.


> This should at least tell you if
> the problem is the device or the computer.

The problem is with the device, most certainly.


> You might also try booting
> the computer with a live CD from something else besides a Debian based
> Linux, maybe even XP if you can get it.
>

Windows on this hardware? And let the mosquitoes in?


> In other words, first isolate the problem.
>
> Are you using Kmix? Do you have all the sliders turned on? Do you have
> the mic boost turned up? Are you plugging that plug into the right
> port of the computer? Does that device need batteries? Are yours new?
>

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No. N/A


> By now you should know that you need to give us all the data first to
> get the best help.
>

I'm sorry, I didn't think it would get this far! I expected someone to
say "run foobar command and everything with just work"!


> Hope your family is doing well, mine is but the kids are sick all
> week. Nothing bad just sick.
>

Thanks, we just did the sick routine, both kids and daddy. I think
only the wife is left to get sick... And the dog...

I found that putting half an onion in a bowl of hot (boiling at the
beginning) water in their room makes them sleep through the night when
they're sick! Apparently it keeps the nose clear, so they sleep
better. Try it!

-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://bido.com
http://what-is-what.com

Please CC me if you want to be sure that I read your message. I do not
read all list mail.