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I upgraded my computer to Ubuntu 20.04 (from 18.04) this afternoon. Audio has been just fine under 18.04 on my computer, however now since upgrading I have found that the audio quality is very poor. It sounds muffled, perhaps even distorted slightly.

I have tried some advice found here to uninstall and reinstall PulseAudio, but that did not help. Ubuntu 20.04 - No sound

Where can I look for this problem? I remember a couple of years ago installing a pulseAudio graphic equalizer to play with the Bass/Treble settings, and although it worked, it was very easy to get a similar type of sound out of it, and I found it generally unreliable, so I removed it, however as I say that was a long time ago. I only mention it because the sound I now get is very similar.

The audio quality is bad regardless of whether I am listening on the analogue audio output on the motherboard, or my Bluetooth headset.

Thanks guys

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1 Answers1

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An update on my own question:

I eventually concluded the problem was exclusively with the particular headset I am using. It is a Jabra headset that is too complicated for it's own good. It has features whereby it can connect to multiple bluetooth devices/computers at once for example. I have tried using the supplied bluetooth dongle (which is marginally better) as well as onboard bluetooth.

this headset has been notorious for me over the last 3 years that I have had it, for audio quality issues, or telling me it is muted (a women's voice states "muted" when in fact it is not, or randomly mutes or changes the tonal quality of the sound when I open an application like Telegram). My speakers on the other hand work just fine. There is something this headset simply does not like when it comes to running on a Linux machine. I am not using any special drivers. Linux simply detects the headset, and it "works" from that point forward.

the good news is that after nearly a week of incurred frustration with the bad audio, it has mysteriously cleared up. I have not changed anything (apart from routine Ubuntu updates)

we can close this question off for now (or at least until this problem rears it's head again). Thank you.

PS. I would be curios to know whether anybody else has had issues with Jabra headsets like this.

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