Raspberry Pi is not recording from USB Microphone

Question

I've an USB hub (Plugabble) with a usb Daffodil sound card. The Speakers are working great, but the microphone is not working. I don't know what to do anymore to get it working.

The usb sound card is set as default

The arecord command records but no sound is recorded.

The aplay play sounds nicely.

Here are some of my settings:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ arecord -L
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
default:CARD=Set
    C-Media USB Headphone Set, USB Audio
    Default Audio Device
sysdefault:CARD=Set
    C-Media USB Headphone Set, USB Audio
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=Set,DEV=0
    C-Media USB Headphone Set, USB Audio
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=Set,DEV=0
    C-Media USB Headphone Set, USB Audio
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=Set,DEV=0
    C-Media USB Headphone Set, USB Audio
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=Set,DEV=0
    C-Media USB Headphone Set, USB Audio
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=Set,DEV=0
    C-Media USB Headphone Set, USB Audio
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=Set,DEV=0
    C-Media USB Headphone Set, USB Audio
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=Set,DEV=0
    C-Media USB Headphone Set, USB Audio
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output


pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard Microsystems Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1a40:0101 Terminus Technology Inc. 4-Port HUB
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 148f:5370 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT5370 Wireless Adapter
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0d8c:000c C-Media Electronics, Inc. Audio Adapter

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo amixer set Capture cap 8
amixer: Unable to find simple control 'Capture',0

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ amixer
Simple mixer control 'Headphone',0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined penum
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 151
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 44 [29%] [-20.13dB] [on]
Front Right: Playback 44 [29%] [-20.13dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Mic',0
Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined cvolume cvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined cswitch cswitch-joined penum
Playback channels: Mono
Capture channels: Mono
Limits: Playback 0 - 32 Capture 0 - 16
Mono: Playback 23 [72%] [34.36dB] [on] Capture 9 [56%] [13.39dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Auto Gain Control',0
Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined penum
Playback channels: Mono
Mono: Playback [off]

Thanks!

Answer 1

This depends on you distribution, since different distributions handle the devices differently.

So i think you are running a raspian jessy but tried to configure it like you where on a wheezy.

So if I am right you should go into the file alsa.conf with the command sudo nano /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf and edit the lines

 defaults.ctl.card 0
 defaults.pcm.card 0 

to

 defaults.ctl.card 1
 defaults.pcm.card 1

then go to the file .asoundrc with the command sudo nano /home/pi/.asoundrc and edit it so it looks like following:

pcm.!default {
    type hw
    card 1
}

ctl.!default {
    type hw
    card 1
}

do an reboot and hopefully it will work.

If i was wrong with my guess please comment under the answer and i will update it :) hope it helped.