Electrical – Multimedia switch – audio – MIC bias

The top trace is a perfect output for a differentiated square-wave:

The \$C\$ is your coupling capacitor. This is a high-pass filter with

\$ f_c = \dfrac{1}{2 \pi RC}\$

So the higher RC the lower the cutoff frequency. If \$f_c\$ is lower than the signal frequency the signal will pass without much distortion, that's the rightmost waveform. As RC becomes lower the cutoff frequency will move to the right, and ultimately only the signal's highest frequency components will pass the filter. That's the leftmost waveform, only the edges will pass.

So to get a good reconstruction of your signal you'll have to increase RC. I'm not quite sure where exactly you measured this signal, so I don't know the components' values, but you may increase \$R\$ by a factor 10 to start with.

The value is the output of a sensor reading from an Analog-to-Digital-Converter(ADC). An ADC converts from real world values to something the microprocessor can understand, a series of bits.

So a real quick overview of how an ADC works: You feed it a Vref voltage, and a signal. That signal is supposed to be between GND and your Vref. It then gives you a binary representation of what voltage your signal was. The number of bits of your ADC is the amount of granularity it can give you. So let's say your Vref is 5V, and you feed into the signal a sine wave going from 1V to 3V. Now let's also say you have a 10-bit ADC. Your value is going to be oscillating between (1/5 * 1024) to (3/5 * 1024).

So that's what your getting when you print out val on the serial port. Now, as to whether your mic and audio equipment can be hooked up directly to pins on an arduino, we probably need more information to answer. Please let us know which part #s you have and any details you have about them etc. and we can provide more information about that. For example, you might need an amplifier or other supporting parts. To get you started check out this example of an arduino with an electret microphone.