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Built in Mic Issue

The input level sound bars in Preferences / Sound for the built-in mic are grey instead of blue.

When I conference call.. other people say the sound from the mic is not good.. its hard to hear, muffled and picks up noise from the computer fan.

In Audio Midi, the Built-in Microphone is set to 2ch 24-bit 48 kHz. Under sound master, the Master bar is also grey colour and the 2 channel bars are set all the way to left and not scrollable. Mute checkbox is unchecked.

How can the sound from the built-in mic be improved?


iMac Retinal 2017 with Big Sur.


iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Sep 3, 2021 2:55 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 3, 2021 11:29 AM

Reboot your Mac and see if the problem is cleared.


If rebooting your Mac doesn’t fix things, see if the problem still happens in Safe mode (hold the shift key down at startup). It can take much longer to safe boot (10 min) so be patient.

click> How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support 


Safe mode forces the OS to clear certain caches and logs and do other miscellaneous housekeeping. It's non-destructive to user data so is safe to do. Very often certain weird software behavior is corrected by simply logging in this way as a troubleshooting method. When you're in safe boot, the machine will not be at its best performance, especially with graphics, but that's normal.


Does the problem persist while in Safe mode?

Exit safe mode by restarting your Mac normally and re-evaluate the issue again.

If the problem is still unresolved, please return here and post a reply and we’ll see what else we can come up with for help.

Similar questions

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 3, 2021 11:29 AM in response to Jurong

Reboot your Mac and see if the problem is cleared.


If rebooting your Mac doesn’t fix things, see if the problem still happens in Safe mode (hold the shift key down at startup). It can take much longer to safe boot (10 min) so be patient.

click> How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support 


Safe mode forces the OS to clear certain caches and logs and do other miscellaneous housekeeping. It's non-destructive to user data so is safe to do. Very often certain weird software behavior is corrected by simply logging in this way as a troubleshooting method. When you're in safe boot, the machine will not be at its best performance, especially with graphics, but that's normal.


Does the problem persist while in Safe mode?

Exit safe mode by restarting your Mac normally and re-evaluate the issue again.

If the problem is still unresolved, please return here and post a reply and we’ll see what else we can come up with for help.

Built in Mic Issue

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