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Mic volume on Dell XPS M1330 running Ubuntu 10.04
Problem: Microphone volume on my Dell XPS M1330 on Ubuntu is way too low.
My guess is that pulseaudio does not recognize the correct range for the volume setting on the microphone. The microphone array adjusts volume in hardware (I guess).
The not so simple fix, is to open PulseAudio Manager (paman), and set the volume manually: Devices | Sources | <microphone source> | Properties, and set volume to some large value above 100%, such as 260%.
To store this setting is not so simple, and it is something of a chore to do this setting everytime I start Skype. Until it is fixed, my solution for it is to edit /etc/pulse/default.pa and add the following line to the bottom:
set-source-volume 1 170000
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Åsmund's ramblings about programming, linux and other stuff 
thanks for this, works well, running opensuse11.3 with sblive5.1 and using primitive hand free kit (little mic and one in-ear speaker) setting volume to 225000 does a job – not letting skype set volumes is a good idea also, thanks again
This is still an issue in Ubuntu 11.04 on a Dell XPS M1530. This fix still works though.
Great work, thank you very much. Chances are this is not only the best fix available for Dells with this sound card, but the only one that really works.
This is still an issue in Fedora 17, but your fix works perfectly. Thank you very much.
Wanted to update that this fix works on Ubuntu 12.04 switched over to Kubuntu. So, even though you can fiddle all you want with Kmix levels, until you apply the fix shown above, the microphone doesn’t have volume up enough. Installing paman and adjusting level worked initially. Now I need to check that the mod to /etc/pulse/default.pa will make it permanent. Kind of wondering if updates to pulse would wipe out my edit though. Is there a /etc/pulse/local.pa that will not allow my fix to disappear upon updates?