29

I am using Ubuntu 12.04 and Skype.

My mic is not working. I have 1 mic attached to the system and another one in my headphone (Beats by Dr. Dre).

I followed these steps:

Turn PulseAudio autospawn off, normally: $ echo "autospawn = no" > ~/.pulse/client.conf

killall pulseaudio

But this did not help me and it disabled my sound after my system restarted. I then tried

echo "autospawn = yes" > ~/.pulse/client.conf

then

pulseaudio -D

It fixed my system sound but still no sound on Skype microphone.

After that, I tried this command

echo "options snd-hda-intel model=acer" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf > /dev/null

I've also upgraded alsa sound drivers by running:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-alsa-driver-modules-$(uname -r)

however on the last command:

sudo apt-get install linux-alsa-driver-modules-$(uname -r)
[sudo] password for gaurav: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package linux-alsa-driver-modules-3.2.0-27-generic-pae
E: Couldn't find any package by regex 'linux-alsa-driver-modules-3.2.0-27-generic-pae'

When I type pulseaudio in terminal it shows me

E: [pulseaudio] pid.c: Daemon already running.
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: pa_pid_file_create() failed.

After all this, my sound system started behaving abnormally. Internal Speakers and headphone or 5.1 speakers both works at same time but still the microphone is not working. I even hear a noise when I don't play anything. It's freaking me out and my microphone problem is after 12.04 . Can I use my headphone microphone? I am having beats headphones.

Details of my system alsamixer

ScreenShot OF SKYPE

ScreenShot OF ubu8ntu

Even Now My system sound OUTPUT connector option is gone here is the screen shot enter image description here

enter image description here

6
  • Never, ever kill PulseAudio. It's a careless thing to do. Have you set up your microphone correctly using the Sound Preferences in System Settings? Does it work there?
    – cumulus007
    Jul 15, 2012 at 6:55
  • 3
    Please reboot your computer, start Skype normally and add a screen shot of the Skype sound settings and a screenshot of the sound input option under the Ubuntu sound settings. Jul 15, 2012 at 7:13
  • @BrunoPereira I Posted Screenshot of both , but i am facing one more problem i notic now that my 5.1 speaker and my internal speaker both is working when i plug my 5.1 audio jack . Even when i plug my headfone . Before this is was not like this . Jul 15, 2012 at 15:25
  • @Gaurav_Java you should add that to the post with more information about it. Jul 15, 2012 at 16:04
  • @BrunoPereira I posted with MY alsamixer information Jul 16, 2012 at 3:28

23 Answers 23

40

My solution

I think that the problem lies within a non-intuitive way of adjusting the recording settings.

Within skype, do the following:

  • Open options dialog.
  • Go to Sound Devices.
  • Click on 'Open PulseAudio Volume Control'.

Here comes the non-intuitive part!!!

Under the 'Recording' tab...

If no program is recording anything (being in idle mode) it shows nothing at all. One might think that there is nothing to this tab of interest, but one would be mistaken!!! Keep this tab open and visible. Make sure the 'Show' option at the bottom is set to either 'All Streams' or 'Applications'.

Start a test call from the options dialog.

The pulseaudio dialog will now show what program is recording sound from where.

Skype: Input from...

To the right of this text, select your input device and it should finally work.

It took me a while to figure this one out.

1
  • 2
    Worked for me on xubuntu 16.04. gstreamer-properties is not available anymore. Clever thought. Thanks! In my case, I had to switch between "Monitor of internal audio..." to "Internal audio".
    – Lalylulelo
    Jan 6, 2018 at 8:52
20

Changing Device Input values under gstreamer-properties fixed it for me.

Source

enter image description here

3
  • 1
    Glad it worked for you. Nov 17, 2012 at 18:26
  • Same issue here but with ubuntu 12.10 and skype 4.0.0.8. The fix not working :( Dec 1, 2012 at 15:17
  • Thanks dude, after lot of searching I found this answer and it worked immediately. Oct 5, 2014 at 13:40
6

I have head a similar problem on a realtek HD audio system (eeePC R101). After upgrading from Ubuntu (Xubuntu) 10.04 to 12.04, the microphone turned out to be unusable, the sound it recorded was at such a low volume that it could not be used. Using skype was not possible. After looking through a couple of forum entries I summarized people had found pulseaudio not working on this type of sound card. In contrast to older skype versions that required pulseaudio, the current skype (4.1) also uses ALSA. This, however, requires pulseaudio to be uninstalled. If you don't really need pulseaudio for other reasons, give this a try:

sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio

Then reboot the system and try using skype. Make sure to turn off "allow skype to adjust mixer levels" in the audio settings and make sure in Alsamiser or XFCE4-mixer that the microphone is turned on.

Hopefully someone finds out why pulseaudio capture does not work on Realtek HD anymore.

3
6

In case when this problem is not connected with the volume level, your system is probably using the wrong input device. I'm using Mint 18 and to solve my problem I installed "pavucontrol" from software center. enter image description here

You will find it is you sound applications - "PulseAudio Volume Control". enter image description here

Go to "Input Devices". There you will see all your mics (real and virtual). You should choose the real one. In my case it's a webcam's mic. Make it default by pressing the green button like on the picture.

enter image description here

That's all. Try log out if not working at once.

3
  • Hey dude, thanks for your advice - it did help me! None of any other suggestions worked before...
    – ko1Rn
    Oct 8, 2016 at 9:53
  • Sounded promising, but didn't work for me. Only the built-in is there, can't seem to get an external to show, even with Duplex selected.
    – Kev
    Apr 3, 2017 at 7:21
  • Correct solution for newer versions, works with Skype for Linux Beta Version 5.2.0.1 on Mint 18 for me. May 17, 2017 at 10:38
5

I had similar problem. My problem was not that the microphone was not working, but rather the microphone volume was much too low and they could hardly hear me on the other side. I fixed it by installing PulseAudio Volume Control (available from Ubuntu Software Center). Run the application, go to Input Devices and try increasing the volume of your microphone with the slider (it goes up to 153% in my case). It helped me fix my problem. Keep in mind that at some point the volume is again reset to 100% and you have to start the PulseAudio Volume Control application again and repeat the volume increase.

Btw, if you hear noise when not speaking, it is very likely that the system is using your built-in microphone. Go to System Settings -> Sound -> Input tab and select the appropriate Input device from there.

5
  • this i done before nothing works .... i tired again but nothing happen Jul 17, 2012 at 10:56
  • Can you be more specific? Were you able to increase the mic volume past the 100% mark? How are you testing it - have you tried Skype Echo service? When you say "nothing happen", does this mean that you hear noise, or nothing, or something else? Jul 17, 2012 at 11:28
  • I am not able to hear my voice in skype if i make it full as you said 153% then i am only able to hear some sort of noise and one thing wearied happen . that when ever i play and sound it is coming with noise Jul 17, 2012 at 12:39
  • Can you confirm that when you go to System Settings -> Sound -> Input the appropriate microphone is selected? By looking at your screenshots, I would assume you have to choose Microphone or Front Microphone. Jul 17, 2012 at 13:05
  • Yes i can confirm that i ahve selected microphone option . even bar in microphone is increasing and decreasing. but no sound Jul 17, 2012 at 14:57
3

I had a no sound on my Microphone problem, also. I feel real silly about this one. I hadn't used the Microphone for a LONG time. When it came time for me to need it, it wouldn't work.

I spent hours looking for solutions online. Turns out though that it was just a physical connection issue. I use a headset that has a little arm thingy that hangs down by my mouth. The arm contains the Microphone. Well, silly me... the arm wasn't pushed all the way into the headset.

One thing I will suggest for people is that they try to verify functionality in Windows if they don't have luck in Linux. Perhaps you'll find that your Microphone has a problem, if it also doesn't work in Windows.

Cheers!

1
  • +1 for bravely pointing out the most obvious - things like these happen all the time.
    – aquaherd
    Feb 9, 2013 at 23:44
3

I found a solution about volume , opened one terminal and will type:

alsamixer

and turn up the value in the mic boost column, with this changes, my skype capture sounds really good.

3

I would also recommend to uncheck "Allow Skype to automatically adjust my mixer levels" in the "Sound devices" Skype settings.

In my case Skype was muting my microphone all the time automatically.

1
  • It solved the problem for me, I don't know why Microsoft tries to help users and messes things up.
    – ghosh'.
    Jun 11, 2018 at 20:19
2

I did everything mentioned here. Also, Installed skype from software centre, installed ia32-libs

but nothing worked. But what worked is:>>

open gstreamer-properties, and set in Audio tab> Default Input > Plugin = PulseAudio Sound Server

I cudnt add the image as I don't have enough 'reputation' here on this forum. LOL!!!

And now , mic is working , in USB Headphone. In default mic , its not working with this setting but thats ok for the moment. Leaving that part for later on or someone here on the forum!!

I guessed this fix when I saw everyone was commenting that Skype is using PulseAudio. I am happy now !!

2

If you already have installed by default PulseAudio, the only thing you should do is to :

  • open Synaptic Package Manager and install pavucontrol.

After that, you will have in Skype > Options > Sound Devices :

  • new button called Open PulseAudio VolumeControl

Click on it and do some additional setting, while (during the Skype - Make a test call) is running!!!

If you are using WebCam Microphone, in already opened PulseAudio Volume Control,

in Input Devices (tab),

  • set Front Microphone to MuteAudio - because you are using webcam mic.
  • set Webcam Microphone to Set as fallback

Make a test call to Skype, couple of times to set everything as you like, and that's it. :)

Hope it's ok now and working fine !!! :)

P.S.

I left selected Skype option "Allow Skype to automatically adjuce my mixer levels" , 'cos mic on my web-cam working excellent! It is up to you.

1

Quickly sharing my experience there :

Once on Ubuntu 12.04, sound input (onboard mic-in) drove me mad for some time.

TL;DR first: I could avoid the microphone problem switching desktop environment to gnome-shell (or gnome-session-fallback). It sounds weird but it's obvious on my rig.

I've read a lot, tried a lot, without success.

On Unity desktop, the (default) sound control panel will show a wrong audio device :

"Stereo analog output + Digital Stereo (IEC958) input" (my hardware isn't even capable of digital stereo input)

While the right one should be "Analog Stereo duplex" .

Any tweak through "pavucontrol" wouldn't have any effect.

Later, I've tried the latest gnome desktop (gnome-shell). While on gnome-shell, "Analog Stereo duplex" was available to pick and all was working as it should. Back on Unity, the problem was back again.

I have no clue how this can possibly be related to Unity, but somehow it is.

1

I got the same problem on a 12.10 64-bit, and I saw skype crashing while searching for some pulse audio lib under a 32-bit path.

By installing ia32-libs Install ia32-libs I solved the problem.

1

I had audio and video problem for at list a month! Visited several forums and tried many different troubleshooting. At last uninstall Skype and re-install from Ubuntu software Center it works perfectly now. (At first I downloaded from Skype website).

1

My answer might come a bit late but maybe it'll help somebody one day. It seemed that all of sudden my microphone stopped working in skype although it still worked with all other programs. I tried all the solutions mentioned in this post (and more) but none of them worked...

What worked for me was deleting the pulseaudio config and profile files so that pulseaudio is forced to generate new ones:

rm -r ~/.pulse/

restart pulseaudio or your computer afterwards

(ubuntu 12.04 64bit, skype 4.2.0.11, pulseaudio 1.1, 5.1 usb sound card)

1

After having this problem linger for quite a few weeks using Ubuntu 12.04 and trying literally dozens of suggestions, I can confirm pulseaudio as the culprit. The suggestion by jhench in my case at least, finally solved the problem:

sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio

After running the above on a terminal and restarting my system, Skype and all other applications that used the built in microphone on my Asus Zenbook began to work reliably.

There are far too many suggestions out posted throughout various sites which simply do not work, and many do more harm than good. One even suggested installing pulseaudio. I hope my confirming that this particular solution helps others in a similar set of circumstances.

1

I have a Lenovo x201 with Conexant CX20585 (learned it from cat /proc/asound/card0/codec#* | grep Codec I have struggled for days to have my internal mic working, everything else worked (external mic, audio, HDMI audio) though. Here is what I did, which finally solved my problem (Ubuntu 14.10, alsa driver)

  1. Installed the nightly alsa drivers for my distribution following this guide https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Audio/UpgradingAlsa/DKMS

  2. ran "alsamixer" command from terminal to make sure my mic is not muted (press "m" to mute/onmute on the device; also I disabled "automute" here (up/down arrow)

  3. After I looked up all entries matching my hardware Connexant by scrolling over alsa docu file on my laptop,

zless /usr/share/doc/alsa-base/driver/HD-Audio-Models.txt.gz

I've tried adding different entries to alsa-base.conf file with command

vi /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

Finally this one was what I needed (but only turned out after step 4...):

options snd-hda-intel model=ideapad

  1. !!! important!!!

None of the "tricks" worked until I have re-checked whether my internal mic is enabled or disabled in BIOS. It was ENABLED of course, but I've changed it to disable, then enabled again, and saved with F10.

Then not only rebooted, but SHUT DOWN completely the laptop (the BIOS help says to shutdown with AC power removed (!) to enable internal mic. Then after power on again: mic worked!

(Tested and confimed in Skype as well, by calling Echo / Sound Test service.)

1
  • I had no idea that the microphone could be turned off in the BIOS -- that was my problem!
    – Mark
    Dec 13, 2015 at 5:39
1

I haven't found the solution that worked for me here. There are many technical solutions and other suggestions that depend on luck. Since the one I used was simple, I'll just add it.

In Skype sound devices option disable 'Allow Skype to automatically adjust my mixer levels'. Click on 'Open pulseaudio volume control'. In the Input Devices tab unlock the channels by clicking on the lock button. Reduce either left or right completely to 0% while keeping the other at 50%. You can then check your Skype. Lock the channels again. You will notice that the graph will start responding if it has worked. You could also do a reboot, if necessary.

I will quote the explanation from one of the comments in http://itsfoss.com/how-to-solve-microphone-not-working-in-skype-quick-tip/

"It seems pulseaudio looks at the mic as a stereo device but in fact it is mono. Since right and left are 180 degrees out of phase the mic signal is eliminated (sound cancelling)."

Hope this helps.

1

I have translated "My solution" in French on my blog: http://tuxnotes.blogspot.com/2017/01/skype-dans-ubuntu-le-micro-ne.html Works great in my Ubuntu Mate 16.04

1
  • 2
    On this site link-only answers are discouraged because links tend to break over time. Please copy the content into your answer.
    – Kev
    Apr 3, 2017 at 7:11
1

In ubuntu 16.04 just goto system settings->Sound->input, then increase the input valume in it. solution for skype voice problems

0

I could not get the Skype working, instead of talk I could hear just periods of noise. In my case the problem was in a stereo microphone - disabling one of the microphones by decreasing its volume to silence helped. You need to run Volume Control (pavucontrol), click on the Input Devices tab, click on the small lock icon "lock channels together" which shows sliders to control volume of left and right microphone. Just slide one of them to the most left.

0

I observed the same problem using Skype version 8.58 on Ubuntu 18.04. Weird thing was that my microphone worked in audacity but did not work in skype.

My workaround was to use Skype web with the Chrome browser. Unfortunately Firefox is not supported and on Chromium you can only chat but can't make calls. Hope this helps!

0

You can try deleting the pulseaudio configuration files:

rm -rf ~/.config/pulse/

Then log out and log back in, or reboot

The source for this solution is this article which states that it worked on Ubuntu Cinnamon 20.04.

-4

Скачай и установи gnome alsa mixer и тогда микрофон заработает нормально

Translation:

Download and install gnome alsa mixer and then the microphone will function normally

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