First things first: I have an Elgato Wave3 that I love to death, but according to various internet searches, it shouldn’t be working AT ALL, yet here I am!
I use it at both as an audio source AND a sink because it has a latency-free feedback thingy on hardware level (I plug my headphones into my mic)
So, I have 2 weird problems with it:
Firstly, after some time/if my user gets logged out due to inactivity/I launch a specific game (e.g. factorio) my Discord does not receive sound anymore. I can still use the mic as a sink, but not as a source.
I’ve found that quitting all available audio sources and then restarting Discord usually fixes that (sometimes I have to do that plus a hard reboot). So I think it’s either Discord (installed through pacman, no flatpak) or PipeWire that’s getting confused.
Secondly, my mic has integrated volume and gain controls that i can adjust via a knob.
The funny thing is, something ALWAYS resets those values to around 25% for volume and 100% for gain on every startup. I can change the gain during startup, and somewhere along the way it gets reset.
This isn’t really a game-breaking issue, but I’d like to not readjust my gain/volume on every startup.
I already tried to set a default via pavucontrol, but that only set a default for the DE (I use KDE) volume, which is apparently separate from the volume on my mic.
ANY help in understanding, or dare I say, fixing these… Shenanigans is highly appreciated!
Here is the output from the bug report script:
https://paste.cachyos.org/p/53c7352.log
Related to system volume levels, one can try alsamixer to debug system audio levels (some of which are separate from desktop audio levels).
Then another idea for your Discord situation, is to use it in a progressive web app and see if the problem still occurs. (Requires a chromium-based browser and using the “install as app” feature).
Discord is propietary and I feel like there is an accurate saying that the more open-source something is, the better it plays with Linux. When using it in a browser, all of the audio routing is done by the browser, not Discord itself.
Thanks for the reply!
I forgot to mention that I used alsamixer already (I’ll add that in the post shortly), but it just set the default of the DE system volume. Not the “mic output” itself.
It appears that the control over system volume is separate from the gain my mic has.
Maybe it acts as some sort of gain amplifier? And is therefore a different “knob” to turn in the settings? Idk.
I’ll be trying to use Discord over the progressive web app thingy you told me about, and I will post an update if I get the chance to use it.
I’m also having a lot of troubles with the microphone of my Elgato Wave3. I’m using the same setup as you (plugging my speakers into the microphone). The audio output itself is always fine, it’s just the microphone that is bugging out.
I’ve noticed that doing
systemctl --user restart pipewire wireplumber
sometimes fixes it, but it’s very unpredictable, sometimes it does not.
My issue isn’t only in Discord, the microphone is completely muted. It does still appears as an audio source :
Device-4: Elgato Systems GmbH Wave:3 driver: snd-usb-audio type: USB
rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 mode: 1.1 bus-ID: 3-2:2 chip-ID: 0fd9:0070
class-ID: fe01 serial: <filter>
Update, the fix in GitHub - jmansar/wavexlr-on-linux-cfg: Unofficial instructions to fix issues with Wave XLR on Linux · GitHub seems to work for my issue.
I haven’t found a way to not reset the volume/gain at every startup
I am having this exact same issue. My headphones that are directly connected to the Elgato Wave 3 microphone works just fine but my microphone refuses to be consistent. I can get it to be usable but that is shortlived by only 5 to 10 seconds before it just refuses to work again. Do I just have to get a different microphone?
So far, this fix may have resolved my issue. I’ll provide an update in a few days if it it’s a permanent solution
Thanks for sharing this Repo!
I looked into it yesterday and skimmed the config file.
It looks like this should work as a permanent solution to the issue where the mic won’t work.
I will keep updating if it turns out that it isn’t.
UPDATE:
The aforementioned repo does indeed help with the mic input. But now the sound output is distorted on every startup. I’ve found that changing the audio output from pro audio to anything else and reverting it back fixes this, but due to that being more annoying than resolving the original problem, I reverted the “fix” altogether.