[SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

volatile void · 2014-12-23 11:26:25

Hi,

since yesterday, I've got an issue with my headset's microphone (it's a QPAD QH-1339). The recording level is WAY too high, at 2 % level it's already starting to clip and I hear noise coming from the motherboard (a Lenovo ThinkPad T540p laptop). First I thought it might be a problem with PulseAudio but after testing with arecord I realized it seems to be ALSA related (same problem there).

Here are my sound related packages:

$ pacman -Ss alsa | grep Installiert
extra/alsa-lib 1.0.28-1 [Installiert]
extra/alsa-plugins 1.0.28-2 [Installiert]
extra/alsa-utils 1.0.28-1 [Installiert]
extra/pulseaudio-alsa 2-3 [Installiert]
extra/zita-alsa-pcmi 0.2.0-1 [Installiert]
multilib/lib32-alsa-lib 1.0.28-1 [Installiert]

$ pacman -Ss pulse | grep Installiert
extra/libao 1.2.0-1 [Installiert]
extra/libcanberra-pulse 0.30-4 [Installiert]
extra/libpulse 5.0-1 [Installiert]
extra/pavucontrol 2.0-2 [Installiert]
extra/pulseaudio 5.0-1 [Installiert]
extra/pulseaudio-alsa 2-3 [Installiert]
multilib/lib32-libpulse 5.0-1 [Installiert]

lsusb:

$ lsusb
(...)
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0d8c:000c C-Media Electronics, Inc. Audio Adapter
(...)

ALSA and PulseAudio config files are stock; I've reinstalled alsa-lib, lib32-alsa-lib, libpulse, pulseaudio and lib32-libpulse already, making no difference. The built-in microphone seems to record just fine (apart from the horriblenot-so-great sound quality). It also seems to work somewhat if I set the recording level in the ALSA mixer to 100 % but Skype of course changes the recording level as it likes. When enabling the monitor (to hear myself) the sound quality from the headset's microphone is just perfect so I'm pretty puzzled what to try next.

If you need more information, let me know. Thanks in advance!

Thomas

Last edited by volatile void (2014-12-31 14:12:49)

TheSaint · 2014-12-23 13:27:15

Have you seen the boost capture in alsamixer.

volatile void · 2014-12-23 13:43:42

TheSaint wrote:

Have you seen the boost capture in alsamixer.

Hi TheSaint,

thanks for your reply. In alsamixer, I only have

- speaker output,
- microphone output,
- microphone input and
- auto gain control.

If I set microphone input in alsamixer to 0, the level seems to be OK (PulseAudio mixer reads 40 % which is base volume) but as soon as Skype changes it (even by 1 %), it immediately starts clipping again until input level in the PulseAudio mixer is pulled down to 0 (-infinity).

I can make a screenshot if you don't mind German...

Thomas

ewaller · 2014-12-23 15:52:31

volatile void,

I just have to say that your user name made me chuckle. I like a little dose of irony in the morning

volatile void · 2014-12-23 17:44:46

ewaller wrote:

I just have to say that your user name made me chuckle. I like a little dose of irony in the morning

Well... when PulseAudio is playing tricks on you, a little dose of irony doesn't hurt, don't you think?

TheSaint · 2014-12-24 02:32:44

So, what says

$ amixer scontrols
$ amixer scontrols |grep Boost ## or even better
$ amixer get 'Mic Boost'

You may see man page (with adv) for more details.

volatile void · 2014-12-26 23:52:44

TheSaint wrote:

So, what says
$ amixer scontrols
$ amixer scontrols |grep Boost ## or even better
$ amixer get 'Mic Boost'
You may see man page (with adv) for more details.

Well, there's not much too see I'm afraid.

$ amixer scontrols
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0

As there's no Mic Boost, here's the output for 'Capture':

$ amixer get 'Capture'
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
  Capabilities: cvolume cvolume-joined cswitch cswitch-joined
  Capture channels: Mono
  Limits: Capture 0 - 65536
  Mono: Capture 26281 [40%] [on]

TheSaint · 2014-12-27 03:13:02

Very different from mine
Try to set the capture level lower, you may do it by amixer or alsamixer or your systray applet.
I think your card is non fully set.
What says

lspci -vnn |grep 'High Definition Audio'

Try to disable pulseaudio and remove the module. See wiki and in particular this section.
I know, their aren't the definitive solution, but we should have to toss a bit of straw from the haystack to find the needle.

volatile void · 2014-12-27 12:59:05

TheSaint wrote:

Very different from mine
Try to set the capture level lower, you may do it by amixer or alsamixer or your systray applet.
I think your card is non fully set.
What says
lspci -vnn |grep 'High Definition Audio'
Try to disable pulseaudio and remove the module. See wiki and in particular this section.
I know, their aren't the definitive solution, but we should have to toss a bit of straw from the haystack to find the needle.

Well, I should point out that it's an USB headset with integrated audio controller (was a bit unclear in my first post, sorry). The sound card integrated in the laptop works just fine but the integrated microphone is awful (in a non-ALSA, non-PulseAudio way ) so showing you the output from lspci won't help much I suppose. But at least it has a Mic Boost control.

Maybe it helps if I describe the behavior in the PulseAudio volume control in more detail.

For the integrated sound card, the input level behaves linear (I know it's logarithmic but that's not the point ). At 0 %, it's completely quiet, at 100 %, it's clipping. In between, everything's fine.
For the USB headset, 0 % is completely quiet, 1 % is clipping already, just getting worse until 40 % which is the ALSA base volume. There it's quiet but at least the volume indicator shows something. At 41 %, it's clipping again until 100 % which seems to behave like 40 %.

Now as Skype thinks that 40 % is too quiet it changes the input level (reasonably enough I guess). Too bad that anything BUT 40 % means white noise coming from the microphone...

Disabling PulseAudio is not really an option as Skype doesn't work with anything but PulseAudio. Besides that the problem also occurs with arecord.

Last edited by volatile void (2014-12-27 14:22:48)

petepete · 2014-12-27 14:14:16

I'm having this exact problem.

»amixer get 'Capture'
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
  Capabilities: cvolume cvolume-joined cswitch cswitch-joined
  Capture channels: Mono
  Limits: Capture 0 - 65536
  Mono: Capture 1940 [3%] [on]

As you can see here, my levels are low but the line in Gnome Sound Recorder is off the chart (that's without me making any noise!).

Can't see anything audio-related in the recent updates that I can revert, either.

Last edited by petepete (2014-12-27 14:15:13)

volatile void · 2014-12-27 14:31:39

petepete wrote:

I'm having this exact problem.
As you can see here, my levels are low but the line in Gnome Sound Recorder is off the chart (that's without me making any noise!).
Can't see anything audio-related in the recent updates that I can revert, either.

Looks exactly like on my machine (although I'm running XFCE). Thank god it's not me!

BTW, these are the last sytem updates before the problem occured. The problem doesn't occur when using Skype under Linux Mint with the very same headset (it's installed on another machine, I promise! ).

Last edited by volatile void (2014-12-27 14:38:50)

petepete · 2014-12-27 14:57:58

Here are my upgrades since the 22nd December. Been downgrading the things that look likely to no avail.

When I remove all of my config:

rm ~/.config/pulse/*

The sound levels look 'sane' after a restart. As soon as I touch any of the controls in pavucontrol or the Gnome sound mixer (which is basically a cut-down pavucontrol) the input level jumps up massively. Not sure exactly what the culprit is here...

Rob_H · 2014-12-27 15:05:28

Same problem here. I can mitigate it in Skype by not allowing it to adjust levels automatically. I don't have Skype front of me, but the setting is under Options > Audio, I believe. Not a real solution, but it's usable now, at least.

petepete · 2014-12-27 15:22:13

So, quickly finding the commonly upgraded packages gives this list:

comm -12 vv_upgrades_packages_sorted.txt my_upgrades_packages_sorted.txt
archlinux-keyring
ca-certificates
ca-certificates-utils
colord
file
freetype2
git
glibc
gnupg
gpgme
gst-plugins-base
gst-plugins-base-libs
gstreamer
harfbuzz
harfbuzz-icu
hwids
jasper
libldap
libsystemd
lz4
mpfr
orc
poppler
poppler-glib
python-setuptools
s-nail
systemd
systemd-sysvcompat
upower
xorg-server
xorg-server-common

volatile void · 2014-12-27 15:41:05

petepete wrote:

So, quickly finding the commonly upgraded packages gives this list:

Looks more or less like mine...

Rob_H wrote:

Same problem here.

Any chance that you're using an USB headset?

Last edited by volatile void (2014-12-27 15:42:07)

petepete · 2014-12-27 19:05:49

volatile void wrote:

Looks more or less like mine...

Yeah, by 'commonly' I meant entries in your list that appear in mine too

volatile void · 2014-12-27 20:01:16

petepete wrote:

Yeah, by 'commonly' I meant entries in your list that appear in mine too

Now I got you!

TheSaint · 2014-12-28 01:32:13

My apologize, for misleading analysis. I lost the point of the first post. The post #9 cleared out the issue.
What about this. That's means to try apulse out.

EvanPurkhiser · 2014-12-28 01:40:41

I'm having the same issue with my USB headset. Here's the thread I posted before I was linked to this one.

For me though it seems like a PA only problem. Using arecord works fine with alsa.

TheSaint · 2014-12-28 01:48:22

volatile void wrote:

Now as Skype thinks that 40 % is too quiet it changes the input level (reasonably enough I guess). Too bad that anything BUT 40 % means white noise coming from the microphone...

You should arrange a decent volume level and disable automatic adjusting on Skype.

dschein · 2014-12-29 16:24:11

Same problem using Google Hangouts, not Skype. Capture is fine and then it will suddenly jump. I can watch it in pavucontrol. Alsamixer looks fine and I can adjust capture there and pavucontrol will go back to normal for a few moments and then spike again. I have to keep adjusting alsamixer to be able to be heard. Problem started last week and, sadly, I have no idea how to troubleshoot further. Any guidance is much appreciated.

rmammoth · 2014-12-30 01:12:19

Downgrade to orc-0.4.22-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz fixes this problem for me. Visit http://www.delawyn.com/2014/12/arch-lin … er-12.html for details. Can someone write a bugreport?

Last edited by rmammoth (2014-12-30 01:17:49)

TheSaint · 2014-12-30 02:57:16

That's all because of pulseaudio depend on orc.
For example apulse, how is it going?

dschein · 2014-12-30 15:11:04

rmammoth wrote:

Downgrade to orc-0.4.22-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz fixes this problem for me. Visit http://www.delawyn.com/2014/12/arch-lin … er-12.html for details. Can someone write a bugreport?

This worked for me too. Thank you for the temporary workaround.

volatile void · 2014-12-31 12:10:48

rmammoth wrote:

Downgrade to orc-0.4.22-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz fixes this problem for me. Visit http://www.delawyn.com/2014/12/arch-lin … er-12.html for details. Can someone write a bugreport?

Thank you very much for the solution! Unfortunately I've already purged my pacman cache and the old package is nowhere to be found. Would you mind sharing your 0.4.22-2 x86_64 package? Thanks.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-12-23 11:26:25

[SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#2 2014-12-23 13:27:15

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#3 2014-12-23 13:43:42

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#4 2014-12-23 15:52:31

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#5 2014-12-23 17:44:46

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#6 2014-12-24 02:32:44

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#7 2014-12-26 23:52:44

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#8 2014-12-27 03:13:02

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#9 2014-12-27 12:59:05

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#10 2014-12-27 14:14:16

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#11 2014-12-27 14:31:39

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#12 2014-12-27 14:57:58

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#13 2014-12-27 15:05:28

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#14 2014-12-27 15:22:13

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#15 2014-12-27 15:41:05

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#16 2014-12-27 19:05:49

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#17 2014-12-27 20:01:16

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#18 2014-12-28 01:32:13

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#19 2014-12-28 01:40:41

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#20 2014-12-28 01:48:22

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#21 2014-12-29 16:24:11

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#22 2014-12-30 01:12:19

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#23 2014-12-30 02:57:16

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#24 2014-12-30 15:11:04

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

#25 2014-12-31 12:10:48

Re: [SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

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