Microphone Volumes are terribly low

[talasum]

Hello
When I talk most of the time in Discord other people can’t hear me very loud, they have to turn me to 200% and still my voice is very very silent. Is anyone having same problem or some idea how to fix this?

I tried with the same headset on my laptop who is running absolutely the same configured gnome and there is no problem with volumes.

Im using Steelseries Arctis Prime headset. I plug it in my motherboard MSI MAG X570S TORPEDO MAX. I’m running Manjaro Gnome Minimal with kernel 6.5.5-1. If there is more information needed please let me know!

Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Navi 10 HDMI Audio driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: gen: 4
    speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 2f:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:ab38 class-ID: 0403
  Device-2: AMD Starship/Matisse HD Audio vendor: Micro-Star MSI
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: gen: 4 speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16
    bus-ID: 31:00.4 chip-ID: 1022:1487 class-ID: 0403
  Device-3: Micro Star USB Audio driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid
    type: USB rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 mode: 2.0 bus-ID: 3-5:2
    chip-ID: 0db0:a073 class-ID: 0300
  API: ALSA v: k6.5.5-1-MANJARO status: kernel-api
    tools: alsactl,alsamixer,amixer
  Server-1: JACK v: 1.9.22 status: off tools: N/A
  Server-2: PipeWire v: 0.3.81 status: off tools: pw-cli
  Server-3: PulseAudio v: 16.1 status: active with: pulseaudio-alsa
    type: plugin tools: pacat,pactl

[weingeist]

Open alsamixer in Terminal.
Check for boost 0 - 30 db

[soundofthunder]

@talasum

in Discord other people can’t hear me very loud

At face value, that seems to be their problem, not yours. However, check your soundcard software, or any settings in Discord possibly related.

[talasum]

Hello, thanks for your reply, alsamixer is not installed on my machine, so i did

sudo pacman -S alsa-utils

In mic testing it sounds good, later today I will test it in discord talk and will reply with an update!
Also there is no Mic Boost setting, I checked some other alsamixer topics and I saw the Mic Boost, but there is none on mine

@soundofthunder
While we are in a call, there are usually more than two peeps and all of them can’t hear me good. I don’t think there is a problem with all of their PC’s.

[soundofthunder]

@talasum

I don’t think there is a problem with all of their PC’s

Which doesn’t strictly rule it out, either.

The thing is, the volume controls that you can access are usually just for your computer. Perhaps there is a streaming-related setting for audio that might apply; maybe in Discord; maybe somewhere else.

All I can do is guess, as I don’t use Discord, and I don’t chat online using a headset. I hope you find a solution though.

[talasum]

I understand your point, but to me it seems strange that with the same configuration on my laptop and with the same headset they hear me very nice, loud and clear

[soundofthunder]

@talasum

I understand your point, but to me it seems strange that with the same configuration on my laptop and with the same headset they hear me very nice, loud and clear

Possibly due to differences in hardware; and/or chipsets.

It would probably help to have more information about your system:

[HowTo] Find system information

Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆ Rather than providing the commercial reference of a computer or piece of hardware, it is usually better to directly ask the system to describe itself. On top of saving time to everyone, this also often provides more details, including something specific to the running system. Below is a (not exhaustive) list of commands for retrieving system information. If you don’t know how to use those commands, or how to provide them to support, see: [HowTo] Use the terminal / TTY …

Output from some of the commands in this Tutorial should help others to take a better guess; or even recognize the problem straight away.

[talasum]

Thank you for your patience!

[nikgnomic]

Motherboard has ALC4080 audio codec that is detected as a USB audio device in ALSA.
Device does not have an ALSA mixer control for Mic Boost but it does have a mixer control for Mic

HW probe of MSI MAG X570S TORPEDO MAX (MS-7D54) #a3e8bcd9dd: amixer

Card sysdefault:3 'Audio'/'Generic USB Audio at usb-0000:2a:00.3-5, high speed'
  Mixer name	: 'USB Mixer'
  Components	: 'USB0db0:a073'
  Controls      : 29
  Simple ctrls  : 6
 
Simple mixer control 'Mic',0
  Capabilities: cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Capture 0 - 39
  Front Left: Capture 23 [59%] [0.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Capture 23 [59%] [0.00dB] [on]

To check Mic level setting in ALSA

amixer --card=USB sget 'Mic'

Discord settings for Voice & Video includes a Mic TEST that will record microphone audio and play it back

I also suggest turning off Automatic Gain Control in Voice & Video > Advanced so the microphone audio level in Discord is not changed once it has been set by user