How to get computer micphone to work

Hi, i am using the latest version of ubuntu via virtual machine.I have ardour setup including qjacklctl. it runs fine, i was able to import a wave file and play it back. i wondering how to get ardour how to record a simple podcast track using a computer mic on my laptop. i spent several hours trying all sorts of tutorial on how to get input of my mic, i was unable to record a track. The recording cursor move along and no wave form. The mixer strip shows no input signal neither the editor window and master track. however, when i play my track with the imported track it works fine. how do i make sure that jack and ardour knows i am using a mic. Oh! I am not using any external sound card. How to solve that problem

Your question is really an Alsa support question rather than Ardour per se. Have you looked at: http://en.flossmanuals.net/ardour/ch023_recording-audio? Do you know if your sound-card microphone is supported by Alsa? Have you used the microphone input for any other purpose such as Skype? Have you checked that the microphone is not muted (use gnome-alsamixer or alsamixer or other mixer). I’ve noticed on Ubuntut that there seem to be several places where a mic can get muted (can mute from panel speaker applet or mute with gnome-alsamixer which seem to be different - not sure why this is - one might be muting directly with Alsa, the other muting with pulseaudio. It might also happen that pulseaudio is using you soundcard so that Jack cannot (but then I think you will get an error when you start Jack).

You mention you are using “virtual machine” which I assume means you are running Ubuntu as a virtual system on some other system. I have no experience with this but I suspect you might have difficulties routing audio to your virtual instance.