[SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

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 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)

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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.
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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.
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I am using:
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Message was edited by: dguiley

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Regards,
DP-K
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Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience

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I know there are tools for this, just don't know what they are.
Thanks for helping.

If the audio is clipped there's not much you can do other than re-record. But there is this: http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/RX/
-DH

Tables too high in safari 3 UPDATE -SOLVED

after I made all the adjustments, everything seems to be
working OK in both IE and Safari 3. Except the tables. They are
always too high.. What can I do, please?
karl,London
Update:
I got a message that it also was too high in Mozilla. I
experimented and came up with such a simple solution, that I am
absolutely astonished that neither of your guys, even the 'experts'
and 'seniors'. who were so fast off the mark to voice their
critique and telll how crappy it all was..
The SIMPLE solution:
the original line I had, for example:
<td bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><p class="normal_text">Any
text</p></td>
SHOULD BE:
<td bgcolor="#FFFFFF" class="normal_text">Any
text</td>
simple, but NONE of your quys, even those who had a look,
could see such a simple error or mine..:-))
Moral of the story: Look and think before your bark...
because you will sure look a proper idiot...
:-) end of problem... rip...
karl,London

SnakEyez02 wrote:
> Malcolm, I have sent the necessary information back to
Karl. In regards to IE
> 6, I didn't figure that out 100% for him with the demo.
In IE 7, Firefox 3,
> and Safari 3 it should work fine. The problem is that in
IE 6 does not
> recognize the third level of CSS which includes the
overflow-x and overflow-y
> attributes. I do believe it can do overflow: auto;
instead of declaring them
> separately as I did. The reason it was that way was
because I found a super
> large image and I didn't want it to scroll left and
right as I knew it would.
> But if the content is going to stick to a specific
width, then the overflow:
> auto should save it. If not an IE 6 hack might be needed
to make it work for
> the older browser.
>
> The following is a really good resource to look at for
browser usage:
>
>
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
>
> IE 6 has been on a decline while IE 7 was stagnant but
now appears to finally
> be turning around. If the users of his site do use IE 6,
it might be more
> effective to use a table layout over a CSS layout just
because IE 6 and earlier
> tended to lack the CSS standards whereas Safari, Opera
and Firefox tended to
> use a fairly similar rendering engine and now IE 7 is
catching on to the
> standards.
>
Hey I was following - hope you don't mind a suggestion.
How about a CC such as.....

I know it gives a hor scrollbar but I think it looks better
that way or
at least visually it is more like the rest of the browsers on
XPPro at
least!
Just another opinion :-)
chin chin
Sinclair

[SOLVED] Microphone recording level is too high

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