Comment 92 for bug 275998

I've just moved to Intrepid (alsa 1.0.17) on a Dell Inspiron 1720 with Intel audio (00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)), and I was having exactly this same problem: my internal digital microphone on the top of the screen would only capture my voice if I shouted.

I was able to quickly fix it by modifying my /etc/asound.conf. The idea was to use ALSA's softvol dB-gain plugin to do a software mic boost and pipe that to a new pulseaudio device "pulseboost" that can be used by Skype etc.

After adding those lines below and rebooting, you should see a new slider called "+50dB Mic Capture Volume" in gnome-volume-control's Recording tab (if you don't see it, go to Preferences and check it). Raise it to maximum (+50dB), or a bit below that in case the maximum value clips your voice or captures too much noise in the environment.

In my case, Skype was able to list a new device named "pulseboost" in its Options configuration dialog's SoundDevices tab. If you choose this device for SoundIn, Skype can benefit from the +50dB softvol mic boost in gnome-volume-control. I also chose it for my Skype's soundout/ringing, but I think that's not required.

Is there a side-effect to this? Well, I guess that with this setup you can only use the mic at one application at any time, because it directly accesses the mic's hw:0,0, but at least you have a huge mic boost in that application.

### my /etc/asound.conf:
pcm.pulseboost {
    type asym
    playback.pcm {
        type pulse
    }
    #software gain upto 50dB for digital microphone
    capture.pcm {
        type softvol
        slave.pcm "hw:0,0"
        #slave.pcm "pulse0"
        control {
            name "+50dB Mic Capture Volume"
            card 0
        }
        max_dB 50.0
    }
}
ctl.pulseboost {
  type pulse
}

I also added the line 'load-module module-alsa-source device=pulseboost' to my /etc/pulse/default.pa, and renamed my ~/.asoundrc to avoid any conflicts with my previous alsa configuration, but I think that's unnecessary.

That would probably work with Hardy, Gutsy, Jaunty etc as well. Please let me know if that works for anyone here.