GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 688162
input sound played as output, creating echo
Last modified: 2020-06-06 16:29:47 UTC
When using Ekiga, the sound (i.e. voice) that is input, is then played through the output channel. I.e.: I talk in the microphone, and then hear myself through the loudspeaker. This creates an unnecessary and annoying echo. This is the default setting, as there is no obvious parameter within Ekiga to turn this feature on (or off). So fix should be: 1- not make it the default setting. 2- if this feature is deemed useful, create something such that the user can specifically indicate in case he/she wants to hear him/herself through the loudspeaker while being on ekiga. I'm using easypeasy on a msi U 123.
Are you sure that what you speak to microphone is sent to loudspeaker? How do you reproduce it? Maybe you use an echo service, like 500@ekiga.net, whose goal is exactly this.
Well, what I speak must be sent to the loudspeakers, because it is repeated by them with a short delay. What I do is call myself on my mobile to see if Ekiga works alright (which it doesn't for various excuses). I'm not aware of using the echo service, nor does Ekiga give any indication that such a feature is active, so if it is active then that may be the bug.
I am pretty sure that what happens is the following. Ekiga does not have a very good echo canceller, i.e. what you receive is loudly spoken and as such it is put back and sent together with your own voice. To confirm your hypothesis you have to use a headset (in your ears) and speak to a phone in another room; if you have an echo, then you are right.
I'm pretty sure that the problem is unrelated to Ekiga and is related to your Linux distribution. Some mixer user-interfaces have an option to trigger that feedback : http://www.domenech.org/bt878a-adc/gnome-alsa-mixer-ensoniq.png If Mute is unchecked for the Mic setting, that explicitely tells your hardware to play what the microphone records in the speakers. I would close that bugreport as NOTGNOME.
@Eugen: I've had the echo also when using a headphone, i.e. I heard my own voice back over the headphone. With a different headset however this doesn't happen, or at least not at moment. With the same headset there have also been times when the echo wasn't there. @Damien: how can I check if that is the cause, and what to do about it? I mean, I don't want to totally mute my mic, 'cause would make the point of having a mic eh... moot. @both: thanks for your help, much appreciated!
What ekiga version do you use?
In that case, "Mute" does not mean "Do not record", but "Do not play feedback in the speakers" iirc. Try playing with gnome-alsa-mixer.
version 3.2.6
Need info, as per comment 4.
Ekiga is not under active development anymore: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Infrastructure/Infrastructure/-/issues/273 Ekiga saw its last release 7 years ago. The last code commits were 4 years ago. Closing this report as WONTFIX as part of Bugzilla Housekeeping to reflect reality. Please feel free to reopen this ticket (and transfer the project to GNOME Gitlab, as GNOME Bugzilla is deprecated) if anyone takes the responsibility for active Ekiga development again in the future.