Arch Linux

siggy

Member

Registered: 2022-06-16

Posts: 7

[SOLVED] Mic input level "capped" at about 20% even when set to max

I am using an Electro-Voice RE20 and Scarlett 4i4 with PulseAudio which has all been working flawlessly together for the better part of a year now. After only booting Windows for the last few days to play Starfield, today I booted into my Arch install and found that my microphone input volume is seemingly capped very low.

I checked pavucontrol and the input level was still set to 100%, but even if I peak my mic it only reaches ~20% of the meter. I have had a similar issue with my audio output levels after switching from Windows back to Arch, but I learned to resolve that issue using alsa mixer (specifically GNOME ALSA Mixer) to bring the volume back up. I checked there first to see if I could increase the input volume the same way but found no way to do so.

It doesn't seem to be a hardware issue, as the mic + dac work perfectly on Windows, and plugging the dac into different USB ports did not have an effect. I also noticed that there are no audio input devices showing up in the GNOME settings app which I don't believe was the case before. I have no recollection of changing any audio settings whatsoever in the last month, and I know that it was working normally last week. I did an -Syu package upgrade today hoping to fix the issue with no luck.

I'll gladly share whatever details or logs that might help.

Last edited by siggy (2023-09-07 20:43:26)

siggy

Member

Registered: 2022-06-16

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Mic input level "capped" at about 20% even when set to max

Thankfully the issue seems to have resolved itself after a reboot today.

Last edited by siggy (2023-09-07 20:44:02)