[pulseaudio-discuss] Reducing ambient noise from Input devices?

[Kai Hendry]

Hi there,

I made a recording that hopefully demonstrates the issue I have with
my voice recordings:

http://r2d2.webconverger.org/2015-03-04/microphone-test.mp4

1. Apple headphones
2. X1 Carbon 3 internal mic (sounds best atm)
3. http://www.smartlav.com/ (sounds fantastic when recording from my iphone)

I made the recording via ffmpeg
https://github.com/kaihendry/recordmydesktop2.0/blob/master/x11capture


First issue is auto-levelling. Can pulseadio do that at all? It's
quite frustrating to monitor the levels in pavucontrol...


Second more pressing issue is the amount of noise via the attached
microphone inputs. Why is there so much?! Are there tricks to reduce
the ambient noise? Google's best result is
http://askubuntu.com/questions/421671/microphone-static-background-noise-suppression
and I did try that previously with my X220 to no better results &
setup is VERY finicky.

IIRC both Windows & MacOSX have "Ambient noise reduction" recording
options built into their native audio system, therefore is it
reasonable for me to file a bug on pulseaudio to match this?

Many thanks for any tips to improve the voice recordings in advance,