Sound Blaster Audigy SE microphone setup in Ubuntu and gtk recordmydesktop

So I’m trying to make some simple screencasts, but was running into problem after problem trying to get the mic input working on my Sound Blaster Audigy SE (sb0570) working in ubuntu 9.10. After running down multiple ratholes (like removing pulseaudio) and even trying my on-board sound card. No dice.

So what was the solution? good ‘ol old school alsamixer (v 1.0.20). My card and chip are CA0106. Simply configure alsamixer to look like the following:

Note: if you want to use gtk-recordmydesktop, specify ‘pulse’ as the audio recording device.

Note2: I also had to add ‘-width 1280 -height 720 –v_bitrate 2000000′ to the ‘Extra options’ field.