Mumble picks up sound even when muted

[h22lude]

I'm not sure I can describe my issue correctly but I will try my best.

I have set everything up with my mic so it picks up my voice when I talk but not any background noise. When I look at the speech detection bar, it is bouncing all over the place even when I am not talking. I tried muting my headset using the mute button on my headset and it was still picking up noise. I muted myself through Mumble and it was still picking up noise.

Why this is a problem...normal when I am not talking with the TV on, it won't pick up TV noise. Since Mumble is picking up something and the bar is jumping around, even a slight breathe out with cause the detection bar to jump into the green and pick up background noise. I try to move the silence below and speech about bars but I have to move it so high that the beginning of my sentence get cut off.

I updated Mumble. I'm using a headset with the 3.5mm jacks. I did have a USB headset and it was doing the same thing.

Is there any fix to this? Thanks

[fwaggle]

Our voice detection system leaves a bit to be desired, but first of all, can you post whether you're using SNR or amplitude for voice detection? If you're not in a noisy environment (that is to say, constant noise like PC fans and so on that your mic can pick up) you might find amplitude works better.

Orient your microphone so you talk past it, rather than into it, in particular if you have a headset boom microphone you don't really want it under your nose, in my experience or it'll pick up every breath.

 

When I look at the speech detection bar, it is bouncing all over the place even when I am not talking. I tried muting my headset using the mute button on my headset and it was still picking up noise.

 

You probably don't want to be using the mute button on your headset - this electrically mutes the signal, and I can generate signal on mine by using the mute switch then gathering up the cord to my microphone into a coil. Furthermore, Mumble continually records even when you're muted (and indeed, even when not connected to a server) in order to detect the noise floor for de-noising, so by using a hardware mute switch you probably affect de-noising, the AGC, and so on and it'll sound terrible for a second or two when you de-mute.

 

I muted myself through Mumble and it was still picking up noise.

 

Yeah, that's normal - as mentioned above we listen to the audio device all the time for de-noising and AGC purposes. You'll have to experiment a bit with settings, microphone placement and so on to get satisfactory voice activity detection, and even then it's not that great... it really needs a rewrite by someone who understands audio signal processing. We even have this in the console output for debug builds (it's been there for years):

 

warning: The VAD has been replaced by a hack pending a complete rewrite

 

It's rough, it's probably one of the most annoying things about Mumble on a day to day basis for me, but it's also a hard problem to solve. For me, putting the microphone boom up next to my nose, so I'm not breathing on it, then using SNR is enough most of the time. If you're in summer and you have a fan directly on you, you'll pretty much need to use Push to Talk always, you'll likely never get the settings acceptable for VAD. Same goes with loud children and so on.

Finally, and this is a huge deal, make sure your microphone is configured correctly by following the audio wizard. If your levels are too low in say, Windows' sound control panel, you'll never get satisfactory results (and you'll probably also get instances where if you start mumble, join a server and immediately start talking in short order, you're really quiet for a bit). I know the audio wizard can do some really weird things (mine typically sets max amplification way too high for it to sound good) but it gives a good base-line to start tinkering with settings from.

[h22lude]

Sorry it took me so long to write back. I didn't realize you responded. I must have missed the notification.

I'm currently using amplitude. I'm not sure what to do at this point. Mumble is picking up noise all the time. The detection bar jumps all around. If I breath a little heavy when the detection bar jumps a little high, me breathing will push the bar into the green and my friends can hear it. They say this happens often. I try to raise the bar so it won't detection those but then I need to talk really loud for it to activate.

I have tried a USB headset and 3.5mm jack headset and it happens with both. Could this be an issue with my computer? I don't have a sound card. For the 3.5mm jack headset I plug it right into my motherboard.