Microphone sounds terrible [SOLVED]

[MathMachine4]

So I'm currently running a dual boot with Linux Mint and Windows 10. I recently had a discord call with my friend, and we had to immediately stop the call because my microphone output sounded like ear rape (I apologize if I'm not allowed to say that here, it's just the best description for what my microphone was outputting). I tried testing my microphone by recording myself with cheese, and sure enough, the videos sounded awful. My voice was amplified way too loud, as if I was spitting in the microphone, and even the silent parts sounded very static, despite the fact I'm currently in a very quiet room.

I tried switching to my Windows boot to see if this was a microphone issue or just a driver issue. And I found that the windows boot had no issues with microphone. Everything I recorded sounded perfectly fine. Which leads me to believe it's just a problem with my Linux drivers.

If you have any questions, please ask! Thanks in advance!

[HAWR]

Hello MathMachine4,

in a dual boot with Windows it is helpful to disable Fast Startup in Windows. After disabling, please shutdown and wait a few minutes before booting again. Does it help with the problem? https://www.isumsoft.com/windows-10/tur ... ws-10.html

If it doesn't, please post the outputs of the following terminal commands (please see point 5 here for help: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=83444)

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inxi -Fxxxrz

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aplay -l && arecord -l

(it's a lower case L in -l)

Do you use the internal or an external microphone? If external please post the model and the kind of connection to the PC.

[MathMachine4]

Fast Startup has already been disabled for the past several months.

The shutdown & 5 minute cooldown did not appear to fix anything, unfortunately.

The results of inxi -Fxxxrz:

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System:
  Kernel: 5.14.0-1034-oem x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: N/A 
  Desktop: Cinnamon 5.2.7 wm: muffin 5.2.0 dm: LightDM 1.30.0 
  Distro: Linux Mint 20.3 Una base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal 
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: HP product: HP Laptop 15-gw0xxx 
  v: Type1ProductConfigId serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 10 
  serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: HP model: 87D1 v: 38.24 serial: <filter> UEFI: Insyde v: F.20 
  date: 03/11/2021 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT1 charge: 16.3 Wh condition: 41.9/40.9 Wh (102%) volts: 12.2/11.3 
  model: Hewlett-Packard PABAS0241231 type: Li-ion serial: <filter> 
  status: Charging 
CPU:
  Topology: Quad Core model: AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx 
  bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Zen+ rev: 1 L2 cache: 2048 KiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm 
  bogomips: 33534 
  Speed: 1170 MHz min/max: 1400/2100 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 
  1: 1431 2: 1331 3: 1377 4: 1365 5: 1131 6: 1240 7: 1438 8: 1400 
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Picasso vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: amdgpu v: kernel 
  bus ID: 04:00.0 chip ID: 1002:15d8 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 driver: amdgpu,ati 
  unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics (RAVEN DRM 3.42.0 
  5.14.0-1034-oem LLVM 12.0.0) 
  v: 4.6 Mesa 21.2.6 direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Raven/Raven2/Fenghuang HDMI/DP Audio vendor: Hewlett-Packard 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 04:00.1 chip ID: 1002:15de 
  Device-2: AMD Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio Processor 
  vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: snd_pci_acp3x v: kernel bus ID: 04:00.5 
  chip ID: 1022:15e2 
  Device-3: AMD Family 17h HD Audio vendor: Hewlett-Packard 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 04:00.6 chip ID: 1022:15e3 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.14.0-1034-oem 
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 3000 bus ID: 01:00.0 
  chip ID: 10ec:8168 
  IF: eno1 state: down mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8821CE 802.11ac PCIe Wireless Network Adapter 
  vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: rtl8821ce v: v5.5.2.1_35598.20191029 
  port: 2000 bus ID: 02:00.0 chip ID: 10ec:c821 
  IF: wlo1 state: up mac: <filter> 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 238.47 GiB used: 85.04 GiB (35.7%) 
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Western Digital 
  model: PC SN530 SDBPNPZ-256G-1006 size: 238.47 GiB speed: 31.6 Gb/s 
  lanes: 4 serial: <filter> rev: HPS2 scheme: GPT 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 116.59 GiB used: 84.98 GiB (72.9%) fs: ext4 
  dev: /dev/nvme0n1p5 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 47.6 C mobo: 10.0 C gpu: amdgpu temp: 47 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
  1: deb cdrom:[Linux Mint 20.2 _Uma_ - Release amd64 20210703]/ focal contrib main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list 
  1: deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ focal main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list 
  1: deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg arch=amd64] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cisofy-lynis.list 
  1: deb https://packages.cisofy.com/community/lynis/deb/ stable main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grapejuice.list 
  1: deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/grapejuice-archive-keyring.gpg] https://brinkervii.gitlab.io/grapejuice/repositories/debian/ universal main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list 
  1: deb https://mirrors.advancedhosters.com/linuxmint/packages uma main upstream import backport
  2: deb http://ubuntu.mirror.constant.com focal main restricted universe multiverse
  3: deb http://ubuntu.mirror.constant.com focal-updates main restricted universe multiverse
  4: deb http://ubuntu.mirror.constant.com focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
  5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-security main restricted universe multiverse
  6: deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ focal partner
Info:
  Processes: 280 Uptime: 3m Memory: 5.74 GiB used: 1.41 GiB (24.5%) 
  Init: systemd v: 245 runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 9.4.0 alt: 9 Shell: bash 
  v: 5.0.17 running in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.0.38 
[/c]

The results of [c]aplay -l && arecord -l[/c]:

[code]**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic_1 [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: ALC236 Analog [ALC236 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 1: Generic_1 [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: ALC236 Analog [ALC236 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

The microphone is internal. This is being done on a laptop, by the way.

[HAWR]

For your ALC236 sound chip, we can try adding an option for the analog internal mic to the alsa-base.conf file:

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sudo -H xed /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

Add the following lines at the end:

# Laptops with analog-mic input
options snd_hda_intel model=laptop-amic

Save & exit (ignore the warnings in the terminal), reboot and test.

[MathMachine4]

By at the end, do you mean at the bottom of the file?

[HAWR]

Yes

[MathMachine4]

Just rebooted. This did not change anything.

Side note: I thought stuff beginning in # were registered as comments?

[HAWR]

The first line with the # at the beginning is only for the description. The important second line with the option has no #.

Then please open the terminal and run alsamixer. With F6 choose your sound card and with F4 capture. There should be two columns: Mic Boost and Capture. How does it looks like? You could make a screenshot and attach it here (see Attachments under the text box).

[MathMachine4]

F6 worked, but F4 did nothing

[HAWR]

You have chosen the HDMI, but you need the sound card with your ALC236 sound chip. So try the other entry.

[MathMachine4]

How do I do that? None of my keys are doing anything except up and down

[HAWR]

In the screenshot you have two entries:

0 HD-Audio Generic (should be HDMI)
1 HD-Audio Generic (ALC236)

Choose the second entry (1 HD-Audio Generic) with the up and down keys and hit Enter

[MathMachine4]

[HAWR]

And now press F4 for Capture

[MathMachine4]

[MathMachine4]

Is that it?

[HAWR]

Yes, that's it. You should play with the "Internal Mic Boost", which I think can have such effects you described. Maybe you lower it to 0<>0 and begin testing. When you press F1 in alsamixer, you find the help with the description, how to change something.

[MathMachine4]

Thank you! That fixed it!

I'll be sure to use Alsamixer next time I have any issues like that again!

[HAWR]

You're welcome I'm happy, that you could solve it so quickly. What value do you have set for the boost?

[MathMachine4]

0<>0, just like you said.