Hi!

I just wanted to check with you people, if anyone of you have the same problem:

in skype and kphone (SIP client) when I talk with someone, I hear him only in one ear.

Is this a known problem or is it only in my setup.

Using xmms I have sound in both ears.

thanks
philipp

Might be an issue with the sound-driver. XMM is playback only ;-), while both others are full-duplex! I suggest you check at Alsa bugzilla (If I remember well, someone else already had this kind of problem...)

Yeah, I had the same problem a while ago, and still haven't been able to fix it. My original thread can be found at http://forum.skype.com/viewtopic.php?t=10376

XMMS works fine for me too. If no one can find out what is wrong with this, then I guess I'll just have to wait a while until Skype finally gets its ALSA support...

I get sound in both ears in skype. Always have.

Does this happen with every caller?
Does this also happen with echo123 when you call?
Have you checked your mixer for wierd settings?

(Some Linux mixers are the most confusing - poorly explained
pieces software around).

[quote]I get sound in both ears in skype. Always have.

Does this happen with every caller?
Does this also happen with echo123 when you call?
Have you checked your mixer for wierd settings?

(Some Linux mixers are the most confusing - poorly explained
pieces software around).[/quote]

Every caller? Yes.
With echo123? Yes.
Checked my mixer? Sure. The settings can be found here: http://tomaz.info/skype-mixers.png

Thanks for your answer - I appreciate that someone finally tries to help.

Does anyone have any idea what could cause this? I am still, after almost one and a half year, experiencing this _very annoying_ problem; I do not hear anything from anywhere but the right ear of my Logitech USB Headset.

It does not seem to be computer setup-specific, as I installed both Debian sarge and Debian testing on my brand new laptop and tried Skype and many other sound programs (XMMS, Teamspeak), with the same result: None of them gave any sound to my left ear.

I have no idea what more information I could provide so someone could try solving this issue, but the Model P/N seems to be B-0125A and I bought the headset approximately 2.5 year ago.

And sorry for waking this old thread alive, but I am desperately searching for a solution as I have a need of starting to use Skype again. And I would not like to buy a new headset just because I don't get it working correctly under Linux...

Great thank-yoosh from me to everyone that looks into this issue!

More information: I remembered something wrong; I just tried XMMS again, and the sound was perfect in both ears, with both ALSA and OSS (emulation). The problem seems to occur only when the microphone is activated by the program, e.g. in TeamSpeak and Skype the volume in the left ear is very, very low (almost so it seems like no sound at all), and randomly the left ear's sound is somewhat blizzy (hard to explain, sounds the same as an FM radio with a very bad signal; there are distruptions in the sound all the time). No matter what settings I set for the left ear with AlsaMixer, it is always as low. When I change the right ear's volume in AlsaMixer, it changes smoothly. However, the left ear's volume seems to be permantenly _very_ low.

Was this problem ever solved? I have the same problem with my skype in debian - interestingly I use two different skype identities and until very recently I only had problems with one of them - i.e. with one identity I had sound on both sides and with another I had sound on one side only.
Now I have the same problem with both identities (and with two different USB headsets that work fine otherwise) - sound only comes on one side in skype and in both cases on the left side (where the mic is). Otherwise the sound is very clear and good, much better than analog...

Sounds worth looking through config files in ~/.Skype/skype-id/
Especially if you've backed up the good one somewhere.
Otherwise hopefully someone with USB headset using both sides can post relevant details from theirs.

(Or was that when you transitioned to 2.1 beta? Maybe that's a matter of getting pulseaudio to lock-step right & left channels?)

So simple, yet so great - you're a god-send, it worked. Since neither profile was working properly, I just deleted one of them, and logged in through skype to that profile - the sound there was perfect (i.e. working on both sides). So I looked at its config files (I didn't want to lose the history for the other profile) and just copied the lines
<UI>

<CaptureDevice>#</CaptureDevice>

<SoundDevice>#</SoundDevice>

</UI>
that had been generated by the the new user config file, deleting the huge piece of nonsense that was there in the old one and bingo!

Thanks for the tip chriswozzie!