Hello, I got my framework laptop about a week ago, and have noticed that the microphone is borderline unusable for any video/voice calls. Currently, i’ve resorted to using EasyEffects in conjunction with pipewire to reduce the static in software, or connecting my Airpods and using their built-in mic. I have set up a windows 10 vm with QEMU/KVM and have passed through the mic to see if it was a problem with my linux setup, but the microphone sounds the same there as well. The webcam works perfectly fine. I am unsure on what to do. Could it be that my microphone is defective, or is something not seated correctly on my framework laptop? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
1 Like
Wow exactly the same issue! I’m also using pipewire and easyeffects and I thought that was a hardware issue. Sounds like it’s more like a pipewire issue?
1 Like
@Yibo_Wei I doubt its a pipewire issue for me. I’ve gone from Arch → Fedora → Windows 10 and the noise is still present (though less overbearing).
Try disconnecting and reconnecting the audio board:
(Skip steps 6-8)
If that doesn’t help I would contact support.
Just in case, have you configured the alsa as was suggested in the guide?
The only other hardware that doesn’t work out of the box is the microphone input on the 3.5mm jack. It’s an easy workaround though. As root, edit “
/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf”, add “options snd-hda-intel model=dell-headset-multi” to the end of it, and then reboot.
@Korvin The issue isn’t the microphone input on the 3.5mm jack, but the builtin microphone on the laptop itself.
1 Like
Okay I just found that the default volume is a bit too high. After I lower the volume to 30% of original and added a noise reduction filter in easyeffects the microphone sounds much better.
I’m actually curious why this didn’t happen before.
1 Like
I already bought a Creative Labs Play! 4 for my audio in and out needs. Cheap and works nicely.
I seem to have the same issue. People complained that mic is unusable at 100% volume. I just made some recordings and tested myself and indeed that’s the case.
I’m running Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS with PipeWire
What I can temporarily do to fix it is fire up alsamixer and press F4 to reach “Capture” section. Then if I select my soundcard (HDA Intel PCH) I see 4 slides, like this:
If my microphone is set to 100% from the system, then “Internal Mic Boost” is cranked to the max, which gives A LOT of distortion. If I manually set it to 0%, then audio is completely fine.
The only problem is my system then reports that my mic volume is actually set to something like 40%.
How can I completely disable that “Internal Mic Boost” thing so my system will show 100% only based on the “Capture” section?
EDIT: I figured out how to disable the Boost sections completely. Now when I crank the microphone to 100% from system, it doesn’t boost, so I never get distorted audio.
I opened /usr/share/alsa-card-profile/mixer/paths/analog-input-internal-mic.conf and made changes in 2 sections: [Element Int Mic Boost] and [Element Internal Mic Boost]. Change both sections’ volume property to zero like this:
5 Likes
Thank you for pointing that out!
For some of us, with Ubuntu / pulseaudio, there is another file path to check:
/usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-input-internal-mic.conf
A bit confusing, as both files are present.
For a temp fix, someone could run “alsamix”, F4 for Capture, LEFT-ARROW to “Internal Mic Boost”, DOWN-ARROW till dB gain is 0, ESC to exit.
If you’re still having Input Gain issues during calls, try editing /etc/pulse/default.pa and replace
load-module module-echo-cancel line with
load-module module-echo-cancel aec_args="analog_gain_control=0 digital_gain_control=0" and restart pulseaudio with pulseaudio -k
On Fedora was able to use PulseAudio Volume Control to modify the input from the internal microphone. I set mine to 50% and it sounds much more clear and not so crunchy.
It’s available through the Software app on Fedora:
https://freedesktop.org/software/pulseaudio/pavucontrol/
1 Like
On KDE as well, internal adjustments work.
Still, threw me off, since Tenacity(Audacity) gain adjustment didn’t do anything at all, I suspected it was a linux compability issue (after I got windows working and the microphone did work there).
Really deserves a FAQ entry, nothing popped up when searching about mic issues before either (only found this thread after I fixed the issue myself), and I even wrote a support request without it popping up as a suggested issue.
Maybe I just don’t know better but I did not immediately recognise that distorted mess as just a peaking input, an FAQ entry would’ve saved me (and probably support) a bunch of time.
I just want to thank you for this comment, as it has completely alleviated this problem for me on Fedora. Nothing else got rid of that nasty distortion.
1 Like
Going to chime in that ive just experienced distorted audio while testing the mic with Audacity. Is there a solution for this?
You just have to turn down the mic gain.
1 Like
Is there a audio sample of how the mic should be sounding like?
I designed the audio “dB” values for ALSA in the Linux kernel.
In general, to minimize distortion, set the value to 0 dB in alsamixer as @Claudiu_Filip has done.
It generally means that the input to the mixer control == the output from the mixer control, and thus no possibility for distortion.
Prior to me adding the dB values, whether one got distortion or not was fairly random as all the values were just in percents and it was impossible to tell which level was the 0 dB point.
In general mixer controls that have “…boost…” in their title will introduce noise because it adds extra amplifiers into the chain.
1 Like