[SOLVED] PipeWire / Discord keeps resetting ALSA Mic Boost to +30 dB (Realtek ALC236)
I have spent close to 20 hrs chasing the problem here, i hope this post will save someone the trouble in the future.
Setup:
Laptop: Lenovo yoga 730iwl
distro: Cachyos
Config; Hyprland + End4 ii dots
audio: Pipewire, wireplumber
Main Problem:
Whenever Discord (or any WebRTC app) reopened or switched the microphone, ALSA Mic Boost would instantly jump to 100% (+30 dB).
The microphone became extremely loud and noisy.
Changing it manually in alsamixer worked, but as soon as Discord switched input devices, it jumped back to max.
How to check:
-
open
alsamixerin your terminal and open discord to the side -
look at the mic boost if its not at zero set it to zero and keep the terminal open
- Go to discord settings and switch the mic.
the mic boost on alsamixer will immediately jump to max and the mic test in discord will just be a loud noise
The culprit:
My microphone was using the ACP (ALSA Card Profile) path:
check using:
pactl list sources | grep "Active Port"
Notice Active Port: analog-input-mic
The fix:
Find the analog-input-mic.conf for alsa-card-profile. i found mine at
/usr/share/alsa-card-profile/mixer/paths/analog-input-mic.conf
look for
[Element Mic Boost]
required-any = any
switch = select
volume = merge
and switch volume to
volume = zero
afterwards restart pipewire
systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber
This fix will work as long as you dont update the system packages, if you wish to make it permanent. it will be in your best interest to create a patch and a pacman hook to apply said path everytime after a package update
Posted Jul 10, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC