I've tried at various times in th epast to record sound with NetBSD, either
via audiorecord or via some tool from pkgsrc.  As I recall, I have only
been able to get usable audio input from my laptop.  My systems are all
PeeCees, except for the AMD64 (a PeeCee on steroids?  (^&).

I've been googling the NetBSD mail archives a bit this morning and
have turned up at least one short thread on port-sparc that also
complains of problems with recording.  (Greg Woods had some problems
and about 1 other person replied smpathizing with similar experiences
but no solution.)

Yet, as I said, the one laptop does seem to record well the last time
that I tried.

I've also tried Evil Empire '95 and '98 on two of the machines where
NetBSD effectively can't record.  Under BillOS, the audio recording is
quite satisfactory.  (My environment has background noises from the
computers, which I'd like to filter out, but that's part of the audio
input which is recorded.  No problems there.)


Under NetBSD, the only way I can typically get any recording to
register at all is to put the mic practically in my mouth, speak
up a bit, and then post-process the recordings to get higher
amplification.  (Again, as memory goes, the laptop "just works".)

One other data point: On my AMD64 box I have LINUX and FreeBSD
installed.  I am not sure how to record under LINUX, but if I
have a mic hooked up, the monitoring of the input (feeding audio
record immediately into audio playback) suggests that LINUX is
able to record well with this same system.  (I have not tried LINUX
on other systems, and the one tool that came installed with LINUX
for dealing with audio recording was Audacity---which just dumps
core under LINUX.)

FreeBSD, on the same box, does not recognize the audio at all.
(This is the 5.3 BETA6 version.  I updated to the 6th 5.3 beta
from a 5.2.1(?) release recently; I never tried audio under
5.2.1, and am surprised that into their 6th 5.3 beta, they still
havn't got sound worked out, despite the appearance they give of
being more focused on desktop applications.)


Any suggestions?  I've had problems recording, and the problems
have been persistant over the years.  Is it just that the audio
record capabilities are very rarely used by anyone?

Should I file a PR, or is it the nut behind the keyboard that's
the problem?  (^&

-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/