Microphone not working in Skype-4.3.0.37-r5 (SOLVED)

Fred Krogh · Last edited by Fred Krogh on Tue Mar 10, 2015 5:09 pm; edited 1 time in total

Using pavucontrol I can see that the microphone appears to be working. I can hear well on the test call, but silence in the part that is supposed to be playing what I said. The microphone records and plays back just fine when using audacity. Any ideas? Thanks,
Fred

Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2015 3:11 am Post subject:

Have you tried disabling the so-called PulseAudio 'glitch-free' mode (oh, the irony)? I find that I have to disable it or I cannot hear nor be heard via Skype. I have to edit the file /etc/pulse/default.pa and change the line:

Fred Krogh · Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2015 3:33 am Post subject:

Thanks for the thoughts. I tried your change in /etc/pulse/default.pa. No luck. I don't see any difference in the microphone levels in alsamixer whether or not skype is runnings. The skype automatically adjust mixer levels has been turned off all along.

MartinB · Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2015 7:49 am Post subject:

I had this problem a few times before.

In my case, it was simply because Capture wasn't set on PulseAudio's audio input. You can change this using alsamixer.

When you run alsamixer, you need to specify the "card number" for PulseAudio so it will show you the controls of PulseAudio instead of your regular sound card. You can specify the card number using -c (e.g. alsamixer -c 2 to select card 2; the cards begin at 0 and I just keep trying different numbers until I get the one for PulseAudio).

When you've got PulseAudio in alsamixer, press F4 to switch to Capture controls. There should only be one Capture control for the PulseAudio "card". If you don't see the word "Capture" in red below this control, then this is your problem. Press space to switch the Capture on for this control, indicate by the word "Capture" in red below the control.

I hope this helps.
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Fred Krogh · Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2015 4:18 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the very clear instructions. It seems that I have two microphones that allow capture, the front mic, and one on the webcam. I was configured with just the front mic captured. I've tried all 4 combinations of the capturing on these with no effect on skype. Audacity is a different story. After restoring things to what I had before, it seems that I can record, but the play back just zips through so quickly that no content in the sound can be heard.

MartinB · Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2015 7:06 am Post subject:

If you've definitely followed the procedure to make sure that PulseAudio's input has Capture enabled, then I'm not sure what else to suggest.

In my case, recording in Audacity was also working, but not with Skype. The reason is that Audacity can capture audio directly from the microphone without going through PulseAudio, so the recording was working even without PulseAudio's input Capture being enabled, whereas Skype requires all audio to go through PulseAudio.

The problem with playback being too fast is also something I encountered recently. In my case, the recording in Audacity moved very slowly, so each second marked on the recording time line would take about eight seconds to record, thus the resulting recording was apparently "fast" when played back. But the recording wasn't just fast; it was also completely distorted, so even slowing it down wouldn't make it sound anything like what I recorded. In this case, the USB device in question was a synthesizer, which can also output audio to its own speakers as well as record. If I selected the USB synthesizer for playback in Audacity instead of my sound card, then it also would play at around 1/8th of the normal playback speed, instead of normal speed.

I'm not exactly sure what the cause of this problem is, but I'm guessing it's a buggy USB audio driver in the kernel. In my case, I was able to solve the problem simply by plugging the synthesizer into a different USB port on my PC. If I remember correctly, there were some clues in dmesg of a problem when plugging the synth into one of the non-working USB ports, so it might be useful to view the dmesg output when you connect your microphone/webcam.

I noticed later that the problem can also be reproduced with my USB webcam, so it's not specific to my synth, but seems to be a problem in general with certain USB chipsets.
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Fred Krogh · Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2015 2:54 pm Post subject:

I'm getting this error message which may indicate the source of the problem.

Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2015 4:49 pm Post subject:

In case it is of help, in my 64-bit multilib installation I have the following:

Fred Krogh · Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2015 5:11 pm Post subject:

I just tried with this setup

MartinB · Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2015 6:19 am Post subject:

Are you certain the GTK problem is related to your Skype capture problem? GTK is the API for graphical user interfaces, so I'd guess the two problems are not related.
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Fred Krogh · Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2015 2:51 pm Post subject:

Sadly, I'm not sure of anything other than skype is not working. Also, google hangouts, does not ring up those called, and when called from outside google hangouts gives no sign of it here.

Fred Krogh · Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 5:08 pm Post subject:

Sorry -- this has been working for awhile. I think the problem was having Digital Stereo Output selected when Analog Stereo Duplex was needed.

mounty1 · l33t Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 934 Location: Queensland

I know it's nearly ten years since the last posting on this thread but here's something to try with KDE 4.14:

System Settings / Multimedia / Audio Recording / Recording

Then make sure your preferred device is at the top of the list on right pane of the System Settings dialog. For example, in my case the PC has a built-in audio card with the usual mic., line and headphone sockets but we use the microphone on the webcam instead. Even though the webcam microphone was enabled (and the built-in disabled) on the Pulseaudio settings, Phonon was still preferring the built-in microphone (even though none was plugged in).

So I changed the setting (clicked on Webcam then on the [Prefer] button), clicked [Apply] and successfully made a Skype test recording.

Then I thought I'll rehearse it again to be sure I was typing this comment correctly so I opened System Settings / Multimedia / Audio Recording / Recording again. The two devices (built-in and webcam) had disappeared and the right pane was now empty, despite having been there only twenty seconds previously. F&*^%#$ KDE again. Anyway, thankfully the settings were preserved and I was able to use Skype.

Oh, another point: I'd changed the backend from VLC to GStreamer. I don't know what if any difference that makes, and now that's it working, I don't intend to experiment any further.
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Michael Mounteney

Efo · Guru Joined: 23 Jun 2005 Posts: 494

I just had the same problem: mike works in audacity but not in skype

I fixed it by: going to "skype -> Sound Devices", then "Open PulseAudio Volume Control", then I clicked on the "Recording" tab in the PulseAudio window. After that I clicked "Make a test call" in the "Sound Devices" tab in the skype window and looked at the PulseAudio window. As skype begins the call, it pops up in the PulseAudio "Recording" tab. A button appeared with "Monitor of Built-in Audio Analog Stereo", I clicked it and changed to "Built-in Audio Analog Stereo", and that fixed it.

Ordinateur91 · n00b Joined: 25 Oct 2016 Posts: 15

Thanks for the solution guys:)