Low microphone volume on Audient iD4
Version, Distribution, Desktop Environment:
- Fedora 33 with KDE
- pipewire-0.3.25-1.fc33.x86_64
- Kernel 5.10.23-200.fc33.x86_64
- kdelibs-4.14.38-23.fc33
- Audient iD4 USB audio interface
- Audio Technica AT2020 mic (condenser mic with XLR connector, 48V phantom power is provided by audio interface)
Description of Problem:
I'm having sound issues with my USB audio interface and mic setup. The mic volume is way too low. I have to crank gain on interface to 7/10 (70%) and boost the mic volume in 150% to get the mic source level to a usable output level. 7/10 gain is the highest gain that does not produce measurable noise. Starting at 8/10 it starts to get noisy. 150% volume does not work well. Some software like browsers seem to override the settings and dial down the mic to a barely audible volume.
In the past I had similar issues with pulseaudio. The auto-adjustment was less severe and happened less often, though. I was hoping that PW would make my audio issue go away magically. :)
In the mean time I'm using a script with a while/sleep 1 loop to force mic volume to roughly 150%.
while true; do
pactl set-source-volume alsa_input.usb-Audient_iD4-00.iec958-stereo 100000
sleep 1
echo -n .
done
How Reproducible: always
Steps to Reproduce:
- Record sound with microphone
Actual Results: The source output at 100% is barely audible. Manually adjusting to 150% works only shortly. The auto-volume feature of browsers dial down volume during video conference sessions (Firefox and Chromium, Meet and BlueJeans).
Expected Results: 100% volume gives decent output, auto-adjustment of volume doesn't cause issues during video confernces
Additional Info Eg. pw-dump -N > file
(As Attachment Please):