[LAU] How to prevent applications from changing my mic level?

[S.]

Thanks a lot for the reply.


Len Ovens wrote
> Use jack as the back end for pulse and unload the alsa and udev modules 
> from pulse.

Hmm, that's an interesting idea, I hadn't thought about Jack. (I use it Jack
on another machine for music production, but not on my main workstation.)

So you seem to be suggesting that Pulse is directly responsible for
manipulating the levels? I assumed that it was Chromium and its spinoffs
(Chrome and Electron apps), using an AGC function specifically as part of
the WebRTC protocol:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37326846/disabling-auto-gain-conctrol-with-webrtc-app
Another reason I suspect Chromium+WebRTC as the culprit is because the same
WebRTC platforms that manipulate my audio with those browsers/frameworks do
*not* do so in Firefox. I would just use them in Firefox, except for
unfortunately I can't do that in the case of an Electron app, and even some
WebRTC platforms are created specifically for Chrome and don't work in
Firefox. :-( 


> however, I think it should also be possible to change the device profile
> for your 
> device in pulse to use that directly. (that is break the profile :) ) on
> my machine
> pulse hides its profiles in:
> /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/profile-sets/

Thanks for confirming this option, I had found a similar suggestion here:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/689209/how-to-disable-microphone-volume-auto-adjustment-in-cisco-webex/761103#761103
That looks like the solution I was hoping for of making it not possible for
processes to mess with the mic gain. But unfortunately the profiles are
under /usr/share/ , so the tweaks will be reverted every time Pulse is
updated... :-(




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