Improve directly USB microphone sound - PulseMeeter

Hi,

I have a USB microphone and I would like to improve how it sounds…and not only after launching an app like messenger or audacity.

I would like to have a better sound EVERYTIME I use it.

In audacity, ardour, resolve, you can improve how mic sounds like BUT ONLY once audio is recorded. SO I would like to improve it sounds ONFLY, like having filters (compressor, EQ, etc…) every time I use it.

I know how to do it under OBS Studio but for that, you must have OBS always running in background, which is not necessary the case when I do video calls on Facebook messenger.

Under MS Windows there is something call Voice meeter Banana that can virtual plug filters onfly so you can have EQ, compressor, noisegate every time you pick up your USB mic.
Something similar exists under linux and it’s pulsemeeter but I was not able to run it, as it returns me an error:

App sinks returned an error, audio backend probably crashed. Server will be closed.
Could not join subscribe_thread (maybe there is none)
closing client handler threads...
sending exit signal to listener thread, it should exit within 2 seconds...
closing socket

I uninstalled pulseaudio and pipewire and reinstalled them, but without any success. :frowning:

Is there someone who already has faced this issue or use another software to do the same thing I want ?

thx for helping me.

pulsemeeter is a good implementation of audio routing similar to voicemeeter, but the effects are not as good

I suggest you try either carla or jack_rack for hosting audio effects in JACK or pipewire-jack.
there is also lsp-plugins that can run as standalone effects

use a GUI patchbay to connect the mic via effects to online callers
patchage, qjackctl or catia for JACK
qpwgraph or helvum for pipewire-jack

There are quite a few recent comments on the AUR page stating things are not working as expected. Perhaps see the upstream issues as well.

I think this package has all that you need, and more, for processing live audio
Introducing master_me | KXStudio News

Packages are available from Manjaro community repository

I have been using this plugin in JACK over the last few days and it sounds good

For live-streaming or recording I would also suggest using jack_mixer to replace mixer functions of Voicemeeter or OBS
jack_mixer configuration for JACK | gist.github.com/nik-gnomic
But for voice/video calls, the processed audio output can be connected direct to microphone input of Facebook Messenger