My GIGABYTE Q1580P-VA laptop has stereo microphones — one on either side of the in-built webcam. While probably useful, Ubuntu doesn’t seem to play nice with them by default. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution to get them recording audio input.
Go to terminal and type alsamixer. This will bring up the ALSA control panel. Now, just press TAB twice, then use the right arrow to scroll to the controls seen in the below figure.
I Set Capture and Capture 1 to around ’24 dB’ (this seems to boost the audio without causing too much interference), and make sure that ‘CAPTUR‘ is visible beneath both (if it isn’t, select the slider and press space bar). Finally, make sure that Input Source and Input Source 1 are both set to ‘Mic’.
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