Realtek soundcard - Bad quality/possible driver issue

[Duck Freeman]

Hi!

Not so long ago, i installed linux mint and now i have a dualboot setup ( Windows 7 + Linux Mint )

My problem is, that on windows 7, i can configure my microphone, and the output is loud and clear, no veird noises, etc.
But not on Linux! I found out this issue when i wanted to talk with my friends on teamspeak 3, but they told me that they almost can't hear me, but they hear a lot of weird noises, and they feel like if i were talking from underwater. (the audio is the same with other programs aswell, so the issue isn't with ts)

I think this problem is due that on windows, i have installed a realtek high definition audio driver that were made for my soundcard/motherboard. I tried installing a realtek driver to linux that i think is the one needed, but all it did was chaos.

System specs:

OP SYS: Linux Mint 19.2 Cinnamon / Windows 7 64bit 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 build 76011
Desktop: Cinnamon 4.2.4
Kernel ver: 4.15.0-65-generic
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 5350 APU with Radeon(tm) R3 × 3
Soundcard: ASUS Realtek high definition audio ( ALC 887 ) [ win 7 driver version: 6.0.1.7982]
Microphone: https://www.trust.com/en/product/20378- ... microphone (older one with no micro usb/usb plug)

Pre-thanks for helping!

[frostymusic]

HI, do you get that sound error when you reboot from Mint to WIn7? Have you tried a shutdown, then selecting Mint from the grub menu, do you get the same results? I have a realtek sound card onboard and Mint loaded the appropriate drivers upon setup.

[MrEen]

Hi Duck Freeman, and welcome to the forum.

Does the mic plug into a USB port, or a 3.5mm port? This matters because if USB, your issue has nothing to do with your Realtek sound card.

When you reply, include the output of the following terminal commands: pacmd list-sources and pacmd list-cards

[Duck Freeman]

HI, do you get that sound error when you reboot from Mint to WIn7? Have you tried a shutdown, then selecting Mint from the grub menu, do you get the same results? I have a realtek sound card onboard and Mint loaded the appropriate drivers upon setup.

I get absolute no errors whatsoever. Both the systems boot up how it should, and both systems seemingly work as it should, and yet the audio quality is horrible. (Before posting, i already tried variations of booting, from win to linux, from linux to win with total shutdown, with simply rebooting, etc...)

[Duck Freeman]

Hi Duck Freeman, and welcome to the forum.

Does the mic plug into a USB port, or a 3.5mm port? This matters because if USB, your issue has nothing to do with your Realtek sound card.

When you reply, include the output of the following terminal commands: pacmd list-sources and pacmd list-cards

The mic is plugged in via 3,5mm port. (the mic cannot be connected via usb, as it is an older version that has no usb plug)

Output of pacmd list-sources:
root@DuckFreeman-PC:/home/duck_freeman# pacmd list-sources
Nem fut a PulseAudio démon, vagy nem munkamenet-démonként fut. <-- (translation: PulseAudio demon is not running, or not running as a session-demon)

Output of pacmdlist-cards:
root@DuckFreeman-PC:/home/duck_freeman# pacmd list-cards
Nem fut a PulseAudio démon, vagy nem munkamenet-démonként fut. <-- (translation: PulseAudio demon is not running, or not running as a session-demon)

[trytip]

looks like you did something to destroy pulseaudio run pulseaudio -k in Terminal post the results and also inxi -Fxzd

[Duck Freeman]

looks like you did something to destroy pulseaudio run pulseaudio -k in Terminal post the results and also inxi -Fxzd

Strange, because i did nothing with the sound drivers, pulseaudio n etc. I upgraded from cinnamon to Tina, but nothing other than that. ( when i did something to pulseaudio it only made chaos to the system so i restored it back to a older system image set just before messing with pulseaudio.)

here are the outputs in one: https://pastebin.com/9mLWRWCF

Note that some lines are in hungarian, but where's such, i wrote manually next to the line the english translation. ( ---> (tr: example translation))

[trytip]

start with deleting everything in .config/pulse folder and reboot. after reboot run pulseaudio -k again

[Duck Freeman]

start with deleting everything in .config/pulse folder and reboot. after reboot run pulseaudio -k again

I completely deleted all the contents of /home/<myuser>/.config/pulseaudio, rebooted my pc and typed in pulseaudio -k in a newly opened terminal.

the outputs are exactly the same as the previous results. (see: https://pastebin.com/9mLWRWCF )

[MrEen]

Run pulseaudio -vvv so we might get the reason it's not running. You may need to press Ctrl+C to stop the output after several seconds, but give it at least 10 seconds. Copy the last 10 lines of the output and paste them here.

EDIT: After looking at your output, first run sudo chown -Rc $USER:$USER $HOME to restore permissions in your home directory. It might not do anything, or it may scroll a ton of lines that it fixed.

[Duck Freeman]

Run pulseaudio -vvv so we might get the reason it's not running. You may need to press Ctrl+C to stop the output after several seconds, but give it at least 10 seconds. Copy the last 10 lines of the output and paste them here.

EDIT: After looking at your output, first run sudo chown -Rc $USER:$USER $HOME to restore permissions in your home directory. It might not do anything, or it may scroll a ton of lines that it fixed.

I did the command pulseaudio -vvv I didn't need to do Ctrl + C, as it wasn't endlessly running

Here are the results: https://pastebin.com/WvbFBbbm

I also did the sudo chown -Rc $USER:$USER $HOME command, it gave the perms from root to my user.

[MrEen]

Now that the permissions are fixed, try pulseaudio --start

[Duck Freeman]

Now that the permissions are fixed, try pulseaudio --start

Done. No output.

I also tried as sudo:

W: [pulseaudio] main.c: Ez a program nincsen felkészítve arra, hogy rendszergazdai jogosultságokkal fusson (kivéve, ha a --system paraméter megadásra kerül). (tr: program not ready to be ran as root, except if used with --system )
E: [autospawn] core-util.c: Home directory not accessible: Engedély megtagadva (tr: permission denied)
W: [autospawn] lock-autospawn.c: Nem érhető zárolás az automatikus indításhoz. (tr: no available lock for auto starting)
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Failed to acquire autospawn lock

[MrEen]

Please stop using sudo. That's how the permissions get messed up.

Just to be safe, run sudo chown -Rc $USER:$USER $HOME again, then try pulseaudio -k, then test the sound. If you get an error again with the pulseaudio command, do pulseaudio --start, then test your sound.

[trytip]

might as well:

Code: Select all

apt install --reinstall alsa-base alsa-utils pulseaudio linux-sound-base libasound2

source: https://support.system76.com/articles/audio/

[MrEen]

Two things worth mentioning.

With the exception of pulseaudio -vvv and sudo chown -Rc $USER:$USER $HOME, nothing else should be outputting anything. When it just returns to the prompt, that means there were no errors and it (presumably) did its job. The next step is to test the microphone.

Also, you have a "camera" that also does audio:

Code: Select all

  Device-3: Microdia Camera type: USB driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo
  bus ID: 1-2:2
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.15.0-65-generic

Are you even certain teamspeak 3 is using the plugged in mic, and not the one in the camera? Maybe we should look at pacmd list-sources to see which is the default.

[Duck Freeman]

Two things worth mentioning.

With the exception of pulseaudio -vvv and sudo chown -Rc $USER:$USER $HOME, nothing else should be outputting anything. When it just returns to the prompt, that means there were no errors and it (presumably) did its job. The next step is to test the microphone.

Also, you have a "camera" that also does audio:

Code: Select all

  Device-3: Microdia Camera type: USB driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo
  bus ID: 1-2:2
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.15.0-65-generic

Are you even certain teamspeak 3 is using the plugged in mic, and not the one in the camera? Maybe we should look at pacmd list-sources to see which is the default.

Yes, i am certain as i set the right device to be used, in ts3 options.

Here are the results for pacmd list-sources:https://pastebin.com/Za35JVbr

After some testing, i experienced some pretty strange stuff: Before i did the sudo chown -Rc $USER:$USER $HOME + pulseaudio -k combo that you told me previously, most of the programs couldn't detect any output/input devices. After running the commands, i shut my pc down. The next day (today) i experienced a slightly better audio from the speakers (which is a nice extra, wasn't a problem but thanks :3 ), and my microphone's audio was pretty OK. I think it got fixed.... for a while. When i started to use my main mic for a longer while, i noticed that it's sound got turned down automatically a bit by bit. What i mean by that is once i checked the settings in this window: and i set my main mic's volume to 100%. After talking, this setting got lowered automatically, againast my will without me knowing it. After a while i realized that something's messed up, so i set the volume back up to 100%, and didn't close the window. As i spoke, the setting got lowered down to 41% (first 80-something, then 70 ....), without me doing anything to the pc. I was only speaking, and that made the settings get lowered...

After that, i did pulseaudio -k, but this made up the previous problem. (applications won't detect any input/output devices) After that, i can't test my mic as i can't be sure that i'm testing the main mic's quality, and not the webcam-mic's. I ran pulseaudio --start, but this didn't solve the problem yet. I'll do an edit after i reboot my pc.

(for the pic: the left device is the camera's mic, the right one is my main mic.)

[MrEen]

Okay. I think we're getting closer to solving this.

The camera mic is the default mic in your system. You might want to install and run PulseAudio Volume Control and on the Input Devices tab click on the check mark next to the Hátsó mikrofon to make it the default mic.

The sound level dropping sounds similar to something Skype used to do. To solve that in the past, users had to uncheck an option in Skype's settings to "automatically adjust microphone settings" or something similar. Maybe TS3 has a similar option selected that you could undo.

Also, when you run pulseaudio -k, you are shutting down the running sound daemon. With the default settings, it will automatically restart. However, it will be assigned a new Process ID. Your running programs are possibly still trying to send their output to the old Process ID. To fix that, those programs also need to be restarted. I believe a few programs are smart enough to find the new PID for pulseaudio, but many aren't, so it's best to always restart all the programs that connect to pulseaudio anytime you run pulseaudio -k.

I hope that gets us closer to getting you fixed.

[Duck Freeman]

Okay. I think we're getting closer to solving this.

The camera mic is the default mic in your system. You might want to install and run PulseAudio Volume Control and on the Input Devices tab click on the check mark next to the Hátsó mikrofon to make it the default mic.

The sound level dropping sounds similar to something Skype used to do. To solve that in the past, users had to uncheck an option in Skype's settings to "automatically adjust microphone settings" or something similar. Maybe TS3 has a similar option selected that you could undo.

Also, when you run pulseaudio -k, you are shutting down the running sound daemon. With the default settings, it will automatically restart. However, it will be assigned a new Process ID. Your running programs are possibly still trying to send their output to the old Process ID. To fix that, those programs also need to be restarted. I believe a few programs are smart enough to find the new PID for pulseaudio, but many aren't, so it's best to always restart all the programs that connect to pulseaudio anytime you run pulseaudio -k.

I hope that gets us closer to getting you fixed.

I made the hátulsó mikrofon = rear mic default. I also ran the command pulseaudio -k after reboot. Now at least programs detect my devices, but yet the mic quality is really bad. Extra, strange noises can be heard while i speak. (still, only in linux)

[MrEen]

See if this cleans it up any. If not, undo it afterwards:

If you're experiencing glitches, skips, pops or crackling in your audio playback, it's quite possibly caused by the timer-based scheduling pulseaudio now uses. Disable timer-based scheduling this way:
Users of 18.3 and earlier versions of Mint type this in the terminal: gksudo xed /etc/pulse/default.pa
Users of 19 and later versions of Mint type this in the terminal: xed admin:///etc/pulse/default.pa
Find the line that says load-module module-udev-detect and change it to load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0
Save the file, then run pulseaudio -k in the terminal and test your sound