Pulseaudio is playing all system sounds through the microphone output?

coralfang · 12-12-2022, 05:41 PM

Hi, this happened out of the blue, so i'm not sure what triggered it.
Basically if i use any voice application with a microphone, such as discord or skype, my system sounds play through the microphone.

This means i can't listen to music or watch videos whilst in a call, as everyone else can hear the sounds playing on my computer.

I'm not sure where to look to diagnose/fix this issue.

I've played with pavucontrol, trying to stop it from happening there but with no luck, and have also wiped the configs in /etc/pulse and reinstalled all pulse related packages, however the problem still persists.

One interesting thing, is that people in a discord call, they tell me they can't hear themselves being echo'd through the microphone. Whether that means anything, but they do hear every other system sound.

Does anyone have any ideas where to look, or if i can provide any output from some commands to maybe find out what is causing this? Thanks.

garpu · 12-12-2022, 07:44 PM

Do you have some loopback set up with jack?

kingbeowulf · 12-17-2022, 02:07 PM

Run

Code:

$ pactl info
Server String: /run/user/1000/pulse/native
Library Protocol Version: 35
Server Protocol Version: 35
Is Local: yes
Client Index: 554
Tile Size: 65472
User Name: beowulf
Host Name: gandalf.rivendell.net
Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.44)
Server Version: 15.0.0
Default Sample Specification: float32le 2ch 48000Hz
Default Channel Map: front-left,front-right
Default Sink: alsa_output.pci-0000_06_00.0.analog-stereo
Default Source: alsa_input.pci-0000_06_00.0.analog-stereo
Cookie: 52f9:f8e7

and make sure that your defaut sink | source have not swapped or changed. pavacontrol is a bit limited in it usage. IIRC correctly, 'sink' are the speakers and 'source' is the microphone.

I've switched to pipewire for Steam, discord, mumble etc. since it is much more stable and sensible. Slackware[64]-15.0 provides shell scripts to set up pipewire. See also thread here: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...0/#post6243016 and in particular post #210 and #255.

It is now a longish thread, and the 2021 info dealt with pre-15.0 Current, but well worth a look.