X220 - poor sound quality while making skype calls

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Started ‎08-28-2011 by

Modified ‎08-30-2011 by

X220 - poor sound quality while making skype calls

Question

Using my X220 tablet (42992PG) today, and I am encountering a bit of trouble with the audio quality from the microphone when making voice calls. When I use the mic in Skype or audiorecorder the sound is poor quality and not understandable. It sounds distorted - like digital noise. Is there a setting change to solve this?

Answer

For systems still running the factory preload , try pressing FN+F6 (starts the ThinkVantage communication utility) and then switch the button from individual to group call.

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Comments

by on

This is a partial improvement, not the answer. Switching the mic to 'group' from individual helps but still I have to put the screen 6 inches from my mouth for people to hear me with noise and difficulty.

Setting things to sound recording instead of VOIP and using the highest quality setting helps.

The audio using SKYPE works pretty well but the mic on the x220 is a total disappointment as many posts in various message boards confirm. My old x60 tablet PC's mic was a dream. It picked up sound from anywhere in the room like a quality speaker phone. The mic/drivers/software in thte x220 is horrible -- borders on unusable.

CAN SOMEONE FIGURE THIS OUT? It seems either the stereo L-R mic or enhanced drivers are making simple SKYPE audio unsatisfactory. I have heard problems continue when using a headset through the sound card but I haven't tried that myself...the x220 has a combined mic/speaker jack instead of the separate ones so I haven't tried a headset yet.

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by on

Hello Iam heaving very same issue with my ThinkPad X220 Tablet (4296-26G).

I was about to contact support for Mic replacement this is completely unusable and they advertise this as an "conference optimized...". I can hardly imagine conference with more people with this audio quality.

I can not get a proper sound out of this microphone even for myself (single person on 30cm distance) no matter how I combine the settings.

Does anyone have proper solution to this?

There is also too many places in system where you can amend recording settings (WIN7)

Control Panel\Hardware and Sound > Sound > Recordings

Lenovo ThinkVantage Tools > Web conferencing

Lenovo ThinkVantage Tools > Web conferencing > Advance Audio settings (not sure why again here, very confusing UI)

Where do I take a logic to set this up properly?

Thanks