If I understand what a POP is, I would say that I had that :
For what ever reason the microphone was picking me jamming on keyboard but not speaking.
If you try to pinch your screen bezel, while recording same it was picking that up very clearly.
At some point I was even considering the possibilities that the microphone was mounted upside down on my defective webcam/microphone module…
With the new module, while recording (starting with mic on) there a little pop on the recording but I have this to on my desktop when I plug/unplug microphone when recording.
note: it is early in the morning, sorry if my explanation are not great
I’m working with Support and while they’re great, this issue has only gotten stranger for me:
After removing and re-seating the webcam module, the mic still would not record audio.
Last night I closed my laptop lid and went to bed disappointed. This morning I opened the lid, it came out of sleep, and I noticed the mic volume picking up noise! I immediately made a recording and the mic worked!
Sadly after rebooting it is broken again. Putting the laptop to sleep and waking it back up does not appear to be sufficient to get it working again. I tried pinching the bezel as @Cleber mentioned above with no luck.
I don’t even know what this means, much less how to do it.
With the mic input volume set at 50% (in Fedora 35), it sounded good. Higher than that caused distortion (clipping? limiting? I’m not very knowledgeable about audio terms), but it did not have overwhelming background noise that I remember.
I tried Ubuntu 20.04 and the mic did not work. I even tried to install Windows, but neither Windows 10 nor 11 would detect the trackpad so I gave up trying to install it.
I don’t know if it is truly useful but support advise me to do it after I completely removed the mic module…
If you do it, be gentle on the battery connector there are few people who bend the pins and damage the motherboard’s side of the connector. Just take your time, and pull/push straight the connector.
If you don’t feel comfortable doing it, then don’t.
A friend just received their Framework laptop and installed Fedora 35 as well. They have had 0 mic or other issues. Everything just worked, so I don’t think this is Linux or distro related.
I am having the same problem I think. Microphone not picking up voice really. If I tap on the bezel near the microphone it picks that up very clearly. Going to contact support as recommended.
I had the same issue, I contacted support and they sent me a new webcam module and now it works great. I ordered my laptop around the time this topic was created so maybe it was an issue with one specific batch of webcam modules.
I’m in Batch 6 and have the same issue, the mic is only picking up white noise. Tried re-seating the webcam module and recording without the bezel but it made no difference. I’ll try getting a replacement module but I’m in one of the countries where Framework doesn’t ship so I might just be SOL for now.
I am from the September 2022 batch, not sure what batch # that was.
Same problem as several people above, any bump on the bezel, keypad, even on the desk next to the computer is picked up. But in order to hear even the faintest hint of my voice I have to amplify the sound until the white noise sounds like a leaf blower.
The mics are, however, reproducing those contact sounds at the level that I would expect (very loud), which I assume means that the MEMS membranes are working properly. Something must be preventing the air from hitting the membranes.
I tried the microphones without the bezel and there was no change, so it isn’t a problem with module/bezel misalignment.
From visual inspection of the microphones, I can see inside the sound inlet what looks like a webbed or spotted surface. Are the Framework microphones bottom port or top port MEMS? I’m guessing that is the backplate, as I would expect the membrane to be smooth. It’s too small for me to see whether there are problems with the backplate: maybe it’s not perforated correctly?
I will contact support eventually, but I’m playing around a bit first
If several people have had problems with these modules, it would be good to know what the problem actually is.
In my case it won’t be either a connection problem or an OS problem, otherwise my mics wouldn’t be picking up the contact sounds (bumps, taps, etc.) as clear as day.
Just thinking out loud, but is it possible that these modules are somehow working inverted?
As in: Instead of removing the background noise, they remove the speech?
Because your experiences truly sound like that.
If you open your alsa or pulseaudio mixers (whatever you use), do you actually see a decent amount of noise when talking in a normal level with a 50cm distance?
So it appears as though turning it “on” is doing something terrible to the compression/bitrate/idk, while turning it “off” makes it work perfectly fine? This is a serious problem for both usability and security. I have been running around with my microphone off (red bar) for privacy, but apparently, sound is still accessible - just garbage.
Yes, I definitely need to do that. Besides the above behavior which is present with Gnome audio recorder, in Zoom the enable/disable works as expected but when enabled the sound is horrible, garbled, and grating. I will be opening a support ticket soon. Thanks!
I’m recording directly into Audacity, so there shouldn’t be any kind of automatic gain control or noise cancellation active, should there? I guess maybe the MEMS controller does some degree of filtering, though I would hope not much.
The noise level is fairly typical for what I would expect from a built-in mic.
As for dmesg, I don’t see anything unusual but then I’m not a Linux expert. Here are the lines pertaining to the mic:
I have exactly the same behavior, contact noise seems at expected levels, while voice is really soft (need to shout to get something that gets over the way-louder-than-expected background noise).
I just tested this, this behavior is not happening for me (when the switch is off, no audio comes in, not even noise), so maybe you’re seeing a different problem than me (and maybe also @ProperGander). I tried comparing with your audio recording, but the links wouldn’t load for me.
In any case, before contacting support I did some testing based on what other people had said support would be asking (try Windows, Linux and live boot, upgrade to latest BIOS, reinstall Windows drivers, remove and reseat webcam module). Then I contacted support which asked me to check if a microphone did work, whether my speakers did work, whether the webcam was working, what my windows version was and if it was a clean install or restored from another system, to make a video showing the problem, make clear pictures of the webcam module connector and cable (with the cable removed), same for the mainboard connector and to send a recording using the broken microphone.
They reached the same conclusion I had - broken webcam/mic modul e and shipped me a new one (neatly in nearly all-cardboard packaging, including the outer envelope and padding, everything except for the anti-static bag). (which I haven’t installed yet - wanted to check the switch-off-behavior reported above first with the old module - next up is installing the new module).
Edit: I just installed the new module, and it works like a charm. For comparison, here is a recording made with exactly the same settings and just normal volume voice at about 1m distance (warning: it is loud, since I had apparently put the gain quite high before): http://www.stdout.nl/static/files/Framework%20fixed%20microphone%20recording.ogg
@Anachron the arecord command threw up this message:
ALSA lib confmisc.c:165:(snd_config_get_card) Cannot get card index for 1
arecord: main:831: audio open error: No such file or directory
Sorry, I have no idea what this means.
I can record sound without any problems using my external sound card (USB interface) and a standard handheld microphone.
I also assume that my internal sound card is working correctly because it is capturing my bumps and thumps on the bezel in sufficient detail.
Here is an .ogg file of me turning on the mics with the hardware switch, talking with my mouth about 10 inches from the microphones, tapping the bezel six times, sliding my finger across the bezel, and then turning the mics off again with the hardware switch. Enjoy!
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