Soundblaster G6 Microphone input doesn't work

Question

I was hoping someone could possibly help me out with my sound card. I have a Soundblaster G6 running in 18.10. Everything seems to work except the microphone input. I realize Creative Labs doesn't officially support Linux, but since everything else is working. I was wondering if perhaps there was something I could do so that I could use my headset microphone while using it.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

I found a simple solution. Tested on Ubuntu 20.04.1 (and Fedora 31).

1. Open alsamixer

alsamixer

2. Choose your soundcard

F6

Sound BlasterX G6
Hit Enter to select the card

3. Activate 'Capture' for 'Line In' and 'External Mic'

F4
Use left-right arrows to navigate to the 'Line In'.
Use Space to activate the 'Capture'
Use left-right arrows to navigate to 'External Mic'
Use Space to activate the 'Capture'

4. Configure PCM Capture Source

F3
Use left-right arrows to navigate to 'PCM Capture Source'
Use up-down arrows to select 'External Mic'
Press ESC to save

5. Record a WAV to test the microphone

arecord -f dat -d 2 /tmp/test-mic.wav -vvv

6. Playback the WAV

aplay /tmp/test-mic.wav

7. Make the change persistent (fail)

After a reboot, The 'PCM Capture Source' keept going back to 'Line In'. I tried a systemd unit file (After=sound.target dbus.service) or a startup script in .zprofile... nothing worked. I think this is because the card takes some time to startup. So I came up with this workaround :

vim ~/bin/setmic

And add this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

cardNumber=$(aplay -l|grep 'Sound BlasterX G6'|cut -d' ' -f 2 |tr -d ':')
amixer -c "$cardNumber" -q set "PCM Capture Source" "External Mic"

if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
  echo "PCM Capture Source successfully changed to 'External Mic'"
else
  echo "Failed to configure PCM Capture source for Sound BlasterX G6"
fi

amixer -c "$cardNumber" -q sset 'Input Gain Control' 3

if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
  echo "Input Gain Control set to 3"
else
  echo "Failed to activate mic Boost for Sound BlasterX G6"
fi

~/bin beeing in my PATH:

chmod u+x ~/bin/setmic    
setmic

> PCM Capture Source successfully changed to 'External Mic'
> Input Gain Control set to 3

Answer 2

I figured it out. Need to add an entry to pulseaudio to get it to see the input from alsa. I posted a tutorial on the process on reddit here