Hello, I'm new to Linux and I would like to see if anyone can help me out with a problem.
Recently, I moved from Windows 10 to Zorin OS 15 Core and I'm loving it, but my internal mic and camera aren't functioning properly. The mic is noisy and muffled. When I connect an external mic, the noise is gone but the sound is still muffled/low. The camera is too dark. I can change its settings in the apps Cheese and Qtcam, but when I do videocalls the image gets darker again. I haven't tried using an external webcam yet because I don't have one.
My laptop is the Asus s500cA. I spoke to a friend who told me it's probably a driver issue. I don't know how to change that though. I found these Asus dowload/support options: S500CA - Support
If anyone can help me, I would be very grateful because I am a teacher and I need to have quality videocalls. Otherwise, I think I'll have to change OS again.
This seems like an issue with the application you're using for video calls. Which application are you using? If there is installation required, what steps did you do to install the application? Can you test on a different videoconferencing application and let us know the outcome?
Thanks for your reply!
It does happen in different applications. I've already tried using Jitsi, Google Meet and Zoom. What gets better is the brightness of my image when using Cheese and Qtcam, because I can edit the video settings. But video recordings in these apps also have low voice sound and loud noise results. When I use video conference apps I get both problems: dark video (I can't edit the image) and terrible mic. When I connect an external mic, there is a difference: no noise, but the voice sound is as low and muffled as when using the internal mic.
If you have any other ideas on what the issue might be, please let me know.
Thanks for your suggestion! Unfortunately, it didn't solve the problem.
The noise the mic adds to the sound reduced with the steps you showed me, but it isn't gone. And the sound of my voice is still considerably low. When using Pavucontrol, the external mic stopped capturing my voice. Also, my computer has the same entrance for headphone and mic, but the headphone sound is mute eventhough in Alsamixer all levels of setting are high.
Sound problems are incredibly diverse and so are the "solutions." Since there is a wide range of causes, finding which solution will work is often trial and error and hair-pulling frustration.
You might think; Why not use an alternative to Pulseaudio?
In your Linux Travels... You may come across some unhappiness about libpulse / Pulseaduio- as Lennart Poetterings addition to the Linux Universe. Pulseaudio is integrated in, part of systemd and because of this, other applications will rely on Libpulse.
So, when it does not work right, you still end up stuck with it.
On Zorin OS Lite, which uses XFCE4 desktop environment, there is an option : xfce4-mixer. If you want, just for grins, you might create a bootable copy of Zorin Lite, access the xfce4-mixer for your sound settings and run a couple tests and see if you get different results than you are on your Installed version of Zorin Core.
Otherwise, we will all need to crawl the web a bit, searching for information, comparing them to your experiences with sound and see if we can find a match and a solution.
Ok, thanks for your attention.
I'll try out a bootable copy of Zorin OS Lite and write my results here afterwards. I'll also check for image differences.
I started on Zorin OS Core when I migrated to Linux. I spent a lot of time troubleshooting. When I switched to Zorin OS Lite, a lot of troubleshooting also ended.
Gnome (which is used on Zorin OS Core) likes to change features and Gnome has switched to many features being developed independently as Gnome-Extensions. This can be good in certain ways, but also leads to more room for conflicting programs.
Well that is most interesting. Worked on Lite, but bad on Core. Something I will save in my memory bank when considering which flavour of future Z16 to use.
