Microphone Quality When Driving

[Bo3lwa]

Hey everyone,

I have a setup where the microphone audio is great when the car is parked. However, the faster I drive, the worse the mic quality gets. People keep telling me that they can't hear me on phone calls when I'm driving. It seems that the mic might peak and cut off the noise when driving. I saw from the pulseaudio configurator thingy on the Pi OS (the one that shows audio devices and can show you their levels) that it does not even pick up when I talk. Even google assistant can't hear me when driving. It's hard for me to pin down the issue and test things since it only happens when I'm at the highway, I was being reckless enough looking at the pulseaudio levels when driving. Did anyone have this issue?

PS. My configuration is a generic lavalier mic, Apple type-c dac, and I have configured pulseaudio with the echo-cancellation-module for them to work with eachother.

Thanks in advance!

[BlueWave]

In source code of echo-cancel module you can see additional settings for e.g. noise suppression. You can try to set it in default.pa (aec_args) file and check if that helps.

There is also option for voice detection. Maybe it does not work well when there is noisy and disabling it may also help.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudi...rtc.cc#L61

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Softwar...cho-cancel

[Bo3lwa]

In source code of echo-cancel module you can see additional settings for e.g. noise suppression. You can try to set it in default.pa (aec_args) file and check if that helps.

There is also option for voice detection. Maybe it does not work well when there is noisy and disabling it may also help.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudi...rtc.cc#L61

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Softwar...cho-cancel

Thanks for the quick reply! I tried to adjust those settings to see what happens but it didn't help with or without voice_detection or noise_suppression. I even tried to change the placement of the mic but it also didn't work. Although I do have only a 3A DC voltage source which might not be enough. I'll get a more powerful 10A and a powered USB hub. But I'm not confident that would help. Maybe the mic is not a good one, it's just the first one I found off of amazon, what mic would you recommend? I'll take even an aux mic but I just need one that can take care of noise cancellation on its own.

[Daniel_BlueWave]

Here is our list of HW: https://bluewavestudio.io/community/thread-2183.html

If mic quality is degraded with the car speed, I would start with power supply. Not sure what you have connected, however 3A should be fine. Just make sure that voltage is stable. Could be that it is interfering with some other device in your car. Maybe would be good to check different location of your complete setup in order to identify source of the issue.

[Bo3lwa]

Here is our list of HW: https://bluewavestudio.io/community/thread-2183.html

If mic quality is degraded with the car speed, I would start with power supply. Not sure what you have connected, however 3A should be fine. Just make sure that voltage is stable. Could be that it is interfering with some other device in your car. Maybe would be good to check different location of your complete setup in order to identify source of the issue.

Yeah I have another power supply coming in. I have an ESP32 in the power circuit that controls a MOSFET driver, but I don't think that should take too much power. But 3A is cutting it close. I also have the apple DAC for the amplifier and a usb bluetooth.

But I'm more confident that the mic is just that bad. I've recorded some audio using the phone built in mic, then conpared to the Pi mic and the Pi sounded awful. I don't know what it is maybe it's the mic's built in USB DAC or what but it aint good. I'll try the power supply thing first then the mic.