Ubuntu – Why is the mic so quiet in Ubuntu

Basic troubleshooting steps (taken from the DigitalOut with ALSA page I posted to your earlier question):

1. Check that the card is found and available (already done! good job!)

2. Check mixer settings (try TonyUser's suggestion of gnome-volume-control-pulse first, then try running alsamixer and seeing if you need to adjust things there as well).

3. Try playing back a WAV file: "aplay -D hw:0,2 myfile.wav" or possibly "aplay -D plughw:0,2 myfile.wav". If it works your receiver should indicate it's getting PCM data.

4. If that doesn't work, look for entries listed as "digital audio playback" in the output of "cat /proc/asound/devices". Note the numbers in brackets ("[0- 2]" should be one of them; that's the one we tried in Step 3 with the "hw:0,2" parameter). If there are other entries, repeat Step 3 with each parameter.

5. If it still doesn't work, return to Step 2 and play with mixer settings.

6. Once you get it working, you can grab a DTS WAV file from this link to test that digital pass-through is working on your card -- be sure to substitute in the right hw: numbers that you got to work earlier: "aplay -D hw:0,2 Norrlanda.wav". If it works, your receiver should indicate it's getting DTS data.

Try the solution posted here. Add these lines to /etc/asound.conf:

pcm.pulse {
    type pulse
}
ctl.pulse {
    type pulse
}
pcm.!default {
    type pulse
}
ctl.!default {
    type pulse
}