There are issues with the quality of the camera, microphone, and speakers on the Framework Laptop 16. During meetings with colleagues, the video and audio quality from my webcam is significantly worse than that of colleagues using any MacBook. In online guitar lessons, the instructor says that the sound is poor and the image is often overexposed. The sound from the speakers is very mediocre. Please provide the option to upgrade the webcam and microphone to a high-quality 4K camera with good sound, and allow replacing the LED matrix with high-quality, expensive speakers.
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Framework recently introduced a new Webcam and Microphone upgrade, the blog post following its release can be found here: Framework | Framework Laptop 13 Deep Dive - A laptop webcam with
It is currently not available in the marketplace yet, since it’s only for preorder in the Framework 13 models, once that is over, you can buy it like usual in the marketplace for your Framework 16. Framework | Webcam Module
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Are they compatible with the Framework Laptop 16?
It’s also compatible with all of our existing Framework Laptop 13 and Framework Laptop 16 models
COOOOOOOOOOOOOL, Thank you, cant wait!
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Are you sure your video conferencing software would even be capable of handling 4K camera input? That’s not something that apps usually do. For an alternative video input, you could use an Android phone — on latest firmware they should support emulating a USB Video camera, at least that’s what I used to do with my Google Pixel 8 on my previous old (and I mean really old) laptop where the camera was nearly useless.
For the audio quality, I haven’t experienced it much yet, but my colleagues told me that I sounded over-boosted, so I had to tune the microphone sensitivity all the way down to 25%.
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From my testing of the FW16 Mic / speakers. The Mic quality seems quite good, but for a VoIP call the Mic and speakers are quite a long distance apart from each other and this presents a challenge for echo-canceller. The echo-canceller is the bit that should stop those echos or feedback between the mic and speakers.
It is probably the VoIP echo-canceller that is distorting your voice that others hear.
If your VoIP application has a configurable buffer size for the echo-canceller, try to increase it a bit.
The general solution to this sort of problem is generally to use a headset, so that the Mic does not pick up the sound from the speakers.
Regarding Video picture quality. The brighter the lighting on your face the better quality the image will be.
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@TheStachelfisch I bought the Framework 16 Ryzen a couple weeks ago Framework | Choose Framework Laptop 16 DIY Edition (AMD Ryzen™ 7040
The microphone quality doesn’t seem to be very good when running Signal on Ubuntu 24.04. I installed it using their official installation and mentioned my problems in their community support forum Echo on Ubuntu 24.04 using Framework DIY Laptop Ryzen 16-inch - #3 by jcrben - Desktop Support - Signal Community
How do I know if I’ve got the 2nd generation webcam module? The specs on that page just say this:
- camera: “1080p 60fps webcam with hardware privacy switch”
- audio: “Stereo Bi-amp speakers with 1W high frequency driver and 2W wide band driver, powered by an ALC1318 smart amp. 2x MEMs microphones with hardware privacy switches”
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I asked customer support to respond to my prior question and this is what I got:
To help you identify the version of your webcam, you can check the serial number. If it starts with FRANCPPA, you have a 1st generation model. On the other hand, if it begins with FRANJB, that indicates it’s a 2nd generation.
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In other threads, people have reported mic noise,hiss problems. On Linux, these have been resolved by disabling “mic boost”.
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