Skype was working perfectly in Interprid, now in Jaunty it was telling me that there was a "Problem with audio capture". I tested Ubuntu's sound-recorder as well, which was not working either.
I'm using the default, normal Skype from the Medibuntu repo's!
Let's take a look at all the different factors here. First of all, open System → Preferences → Sound. Mine looks like this:
- Sound Events - Sound playback: Autodetect
- Music and Movies - Sound playback: Autodetect
- Audio Conferencing
- Sound playback: Autodetect
- Sound capture: ALSA - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, in your case, this may say PulseAudio Sound Server here. However, I have noticed that ALSA seems to record better sound (less garbled, especially with slower computers). Since we're not doing anything unusual with recorded sound (client-server, multiple inputs), I suggest you also pick ALSA here.
- In the Playback-tab (yes, here!): Mic Boost
- In the Recording-tab: Capture
- In the Switches-tab: make sure Microphone Capture is enabled! This was disabled after my Jaunty upgrade. If you're not seeing any relevant sliders or checkboxes, click the Preferences-button and enable all relevant sliders/switches.
Hear yourself? No, then try fiddling again with the settings in the previously opened windows before you continue!
Yes, good, onwards to Skype. Try making a test call. In my case, Skype was still complaining about the audio capture. Let's open Skype's options → Sound Devices.
In my case, the options were:
- Sound In: HDA Intel (hw:Intel,0)
- Sound Out: pulse
- Ringing: pulse
A sidenote, your Sound In device might be either pulse or default as well. There are a few cases when you should use these:
Your Sound Out/Ringing devices are already correct, they need to be pulse. Sound In will be set to an hw-device.- default: if you've succesfully changed configuration files to make the correct devices the default ones. This will almost never be the case.
- pulse: if you're using PulseAudio server for the Sound Capture. But even then, I don't recommend it. Using pulse for Sound In often crashes Skype on my machine...
Before reading further, try making a test call with every listed hw-device (I had four, you can have more or less).
If none of them are working or if you're sure which hw-device you need (and it isn't working), try this: edit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf (don't forget to sudo) and make sure the following lines are present and uncommented, with the following values:
default-fragments = 8
default-fragment-size-msec = 5This is an optional step however, but it seems to help with the Skype sound quality (an other option is setting default-fragment-size-msec to 10).
(!) Now, edit ~/.asoundrc (no need to be root here, it's a file in your home directory). And make sure the following lines are there:
pcm.pulse { type pulse }
ctl.pulse { type pulse }Which I totally did in Hardy as well! The update must've deleted them. This simple file seemed to do the trick!
Then, just to be sure, I reinstalled the libasound2-plugins package.
Reboot, or restart pulseaudio (kill it, then start it in i.e. a Terminal window). Restart Skype. Skype was working fine now. If it is not, make sure you try every plughw-device.
Still not working, no matter how much you try? You're out of luck. If sound-recorder and sound playback is working, you can try an emergency solution. Install the static, OSS version of Skype (you can find it with Medibuntu or floating around in a tarball somewhere). and start it with:
padsp skypeTo route the sounds through the PulseAudio sink. Sound devices in this Skype should all be set to default (or OSS). Calls should work now. Be warned though: always try this as a last resort, routing OSS sound through PulseAudio is slow and bloated, ugly and old. Your record voice will sound like... well, crap.
