Built in Mic Issue

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Level 1

9 points

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

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Answer 1

Best reply

D.I. Johnson

Level 7

22,379 points

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.

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Answer 2

Jurong Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 6, 2021 11:44 PM in response to D.I. Johnson

Thanks for your reply.

In safe mode audio devices are disabled so I'm not able to check whether it behaves normally under this mode.

What does it mean when the sound bars are grey colour instead of blue, does it mean there is a hardware defect?

Thank you.

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Built in Mic Issue

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