On Tue, 2020-11-10 at 17:49 +0000, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote: > but despite testing three different cheap webcams the big > issue is always with the sound. I can hear the other people > perfectly, and the video is fine, but the audio from my side is muddy > and nearly impossible to understand. Yes, it's quite possible that all the webcams have terrible microphones, audio circuitry, and audio encoding. Even expensive webcams. And the audio and data compression used for comms tends to need good audio to not turn it into an awful mess. They're miniaturised, the microphone has a tiny air hole, and they tend to be omnidirectional (no matter how they describe themselves). To be directional, you need more than one air inlet, and/or more than one mike element. The ones that say they have some kind of noise cancelling rarely ever do have a noise-cancelling mike (one that puts room ambience in anti- phase with the mike facing you), they usually just use a terrible software-based signal level threshold mute (muting the mike when the level drops somewhat). Generally, to get good sound, especially with party-line chats, you want a decent mike right next to your mouth. That can be a gooseneck mike, headset, or a clip-on mike. As someone who works in video production, and has designed intercom systems to suit our needs (because the others did not), if you don't want to wear headsets (mike and headphone combinations), the better option (for audio quality and convenience) has been a desk mike on a long gooseneck, and a small loudspeaker that's a further away than most people would expect (to minimise feedback or echoes). You're not tied to cables, that way. > Is there some Pulse filter I can use to improve the audio quality? As a general rule, it's next to impossible to filter bad audio to make it good. There are some things can be done to sweeten audio that's not so great (such as reducing the bass when you're in a boomy room), but that's only polishing the edges of things, not fixing the impossible. -- uname -rsvp Linux 3.10.0-1127.19.1.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Aug 25 17:23:54 UTC 2020 x86_64 Boilerplate: All unexpected mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted. I will only get to see the messages that are posted to the mailing list. _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
