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#1 2025-07-19 21:03:26

betaa
Member
Registered: 2025-06-27
Posts: 3

Poor Audio Quality When Recording System Audio

Hi,

I'm experiencing issues with audio quality when recording system audio on Arch Linux. Both Audacity and OBS produce recordings that sound distorted or degraded, even though normal playback (music, videos, etc.) sounds fine.

System Details
OS: Arch Linux

Window Manager: Hyprland

Sound Server: PipeWire

Audio Hardware:

Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT HD Audio Controller (rev 0b)

Intel Corporation 8 Series HD Audio Controller (rev 04)

Problem Description
When recording system audio (via Audacity or OBS), the playback quality is noticeably worse than the original source. This occurs in:

Audacity recordings

OBS screen recordings with system audio

Troubleshooting Attempts
Adjusted bitrate settings in OBS Studio

Tried recording via PulseAudio instead of PipeWire

Any suggestions for improving recording quality or diagnosing the issue would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

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#2 2025-07-19 21:17:48

jonno2002
Member
Registered: 2016-11-21
Posts: 835

Re: Poor Audio Quality When Recording System Audio

you need to give yourself plenty of headroom when recording so as not to clip/distort the recording which from the sound of it is whats happening, if your recording with all levels maxed out thats bad, turn everything down and record your audio then you can master the audio later and bring the levels up/cut off the peaks/normalise etc etc

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#3 2025-07-20 14:29:54

betaa
Member
Registered: 2025-06-27
Posts: 3

Re: Poor Audio Quality When Recording System Audio

Wow, that actually worked all i needed to was to reduce the sounds using pavucontrol and it completely fixed my audio

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#4 2025-07-20 21:31:53

jonno2002
Member
Registered: 2016-11-21
Posts: 835

Re: Poor Audio Quality When Recording System Audio

kool i thought that would work, just make sure you have no clipping in your recordings, in audacity under 'View' > 'show clipping in waveform', this will toggle clipping to show as red lines. if there is still clipping turn your volume down more, like i said previously you can always bring the volume up later if needed, and also check your final recording after exporting it to make sure theres no clipping either

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