I’m using an USB microphone with Rhasspy, but had some difficulty setting it up. I was able to get everything working very well by:
First, I followed instructions in this post to map asound.conf into the docker container - ReSpeaker 4-mic HAT not detected by Rhasspy new install
Second: and this is where things got tricky, I set the recording level for the usb mic via alsamixer to the maximum , without any joy, could barely hear recording, and very poor wake up and intent recognition.
Third: off to google where I found this article : https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/21697/amixer-how-to-change-recording-channel
Ran the amixer command show in the middle part of the post:
amixer -c2 sset Mic 70dB
(You do need to specify the card for your microphone (mine is c2) and now I can speak in a normal volume from across the room, and get a clear recording. Hope this helps someone!