Multitrack recording problems with Gnome and ALSA

[MrSandman666]

Hi everybody,

I'm a hobby musician and every now and then I would like to record some of the stuff I've been playing. Now, I'm only one person and thus I have to record my multi-instrument songs one track at a time.

I'm planning using ardour for this, running on Gnome 2.4.2 (I think), and the Alsa from the gentoo-dev-sources 2.6.3-r1 kernel as well as jack 0.98

My problem is the following:
I'm having ardour render a tick into the output so that I have something to play along to, like a metronome. This tick should not be recorded, just be there for me to hear while playing. However, ardour (or any other sound recorder for that purpose, like audacity) records everything that comes in via the mic as well as everything that goes out via the pcm.
So, the metronome get's recorded and the what's even worse is that the stuff that I'm currently playing (which needs to be rendered to the pcm as well, so that I can hear what I'm playing while I'm playing it) get's recorded *twice* and creates some nasty feedback so that the result is totally unusable.
When I mute the pcm I can record everything just fine, quality is quite alright, but when I do that of course I can't hear what I'm playing and even worse I can't hear what I'M playing along to. Really bad thing when you want to record a one-man-jamsession.

Any ideas how to seperate the input and output channels so that only the sound coming in through the mic is recorded but all the sound (playback as well as mic input) is sent to the line out?

I'm using a very primitive sound card (some kind of intel8x0 clone) which is built into my laptop. It only has a "microphone jack" and "headphone jack". I'm sorry that I can't provide you with much more info about the soundcard, Hewlett Packard is not very generous with those specs.
The laptop is a HP NX7000 (which is the same as the HP X1000 in the US, just different warranty).

ANy help is greatly appreciated, thank you.
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Mr. Sandman bring me a dream...

[Passe-Poil]

the problem you are experiencing has to do with mixer settings, more specifically which source is recorded. if you open kmix (gmix under gnome??) you should see red lights under each input channel, these are used to select the input source. As for the metronome, put on some headphones to make sure the mic doesn't pick that up.
The feedback might also arise from what is called audio monitoring (playing back on the pcm what was just recorded) which can usually be disabled in the recording software.

hope this helps !
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Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

[MrSandman666]

alright, I'll try that but let me stress that this is not a problem with mics or wirings. I'm taking the sound right out of the amplifier and listen to the stuff via headphone, so there is hardly any real sound at all and it doesn't get picked up by the computer anyways...

I have to select the mic as recording device because it's the only channel coming in. Why it also picks up the pcm is beyond me, I never told it to do so...
_________________
Mr. Sandman bring me a dream...