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Controling mic level under Ubuntu

2021-02-05
2021-02-07
  • Adrian Mariano

    Adrian Mariano - 2021-02-05

    I installed Jamulus and Jack under Ubuntu 20.10. After finally realizing that I need to adjust the "advanced" settings and specify a sound card I got it working, but my mic level is too high, so I'm going to saturate. Other than sitting 8 feet away from the mic, how can I reduce the mic level in Jack? The qjackctl program doesn't provide any obvious means to do this.

     
    • Gilgongo

      Gilgongo - 2021-02-05

      Hi Adrian,

      You should be able to adjust mic level using Ubuntu's sound control panel. I don't think it's under Jack's control.

       
  • Adrian Mariano

    Adrian Mariano - 2021-02-05

    I run a weird window manager that doesn't have those panels and normally I control sound using pavucontrol, which is for pulseaudio. But I'm curious because I have both pulseaudio and jack installed and I'm only using jack for Jamulus. Would the sound control panel work no matter what sound service I'm using? Like how does it "know" that I'm using Jack, or want to manipulate the Jack settings instead of the pulseaudio settings?

     
    • Gilgongo

      Gilgongo - 2021-02-05

      I'm not sure, but I think jack will be "routing" Jamulus through your audio device, and then from there the volume would be controlled by whatever would be controlling that output. So it might mean using pulseaudio perhaps?

       
  • Adrian Mariano

    Adrian Mariano - 2021-02-05

    I don't think using pulseaudio is the way to control the sound for jack. Pulseaudio and Jack seem to conflict. (There are posts about how to get them to coexist.) Jack has its own settings for which audio devices to use (which was a bit confusing) and it did not pull my pulseaudio settings. And furthermore, pulseaudio is disabled when jack is running. If I play normal sound it actually doesn't play until I quit Jamulus and then pulse audio seems to restart and it plays the normal sound.

     
    • Gilgongo

      Gilgongo - 2021-02-06

      Ok. I'm not experienced enough in audio for Linux. What driver is Jack using though - can you use alsamixer?

       
  • Adrian Mariano

    Adrian Mariano - 2021-02-06

    I have jack set to use alsa and the idea of using alsamixer was fitting in with what you said about going to the hardware controls. So I have tested alsamixer and yes, it works. The problem is solved! Jack seems to be pretty flaky about settings, though. I tried to change settings to a different mic and it seems to have disabled jack somehow. (Not sure what's going on. I killed the jack process and it won't restart and work. Hopefully logging out or at worse rebooting will fix this.)

     
    • Gilgongo

      Gilgongo - 2021-02-07

      Are you using qjackctl for altering the Jack settings?

       
  • Adrian Mariano

    Adrian Mariano - 2021-02-07

    Yes, I'm using qjackctl for changing Jack settings. I can report that after a reboot jack is working again.