Microphone not recording

I am using version 24.11. My microphone is working in the system, and Anki was recording audio before I updated it. Now, it gives me no error, and I hear the background static from an audio being played back – for a few seconds, that coincide with the length of the recorded audio – but not my voice. Not sure what to do with this.

Any help is very welcome.

You don’t say what OS you’re using, but it sounds like your OS is picking a non-functioning/not-great/not-close-enough mic. Anki doesn’t control that, so check your OS settings to make sure your mic is active.

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Not the case. I’ve tried with other applications and it works perfectly fine.

I am using Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS.

The mic feedback test also shows detection and appropriate volume levels.

It’s a Qt6 problem, it seems, and I don’t know how to get around it.

  1. How do you know that?
  2. The current beta uses an updated toolkit. If it’s a qt6 issue than it might have been solved in the beta. Can you test it out? (Probably best to backup your ~/.local/share/Anki2/ and restore that after installing stable again)
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You’re right, I am not certain that it is a Qt6 issue, but my problem seems similar to another user’s problem reported here, who identified Qt6 as the source of the issue, that’s why – I tried posting a link, but not allowed.

I will attempt your approach, see what happens. Thank you.

I see. You can probably share the link by surounding it with `. E.g. forums.ankiweb.net.

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This is what makes me think that I also have a Qt6 issue:

https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/audio-recording-problem/49137

Our issue sounds similar.

Another similar issue:

https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/unable-to-voice-record-using-anki/40429

I just tried it on my debian oldstable. Aside from the fact that I had to install lame, the audio does seem to record. It seems to be more quite then expected though (I don’t have this issue with e.g. audacity).

I imported my anki audio into audacity to check if it recorded anything and surely enough, it did. Very very mute though.

Still unsure whether this is a qt issue though.

I’m actually not particularly comfortable installing stuff on Linux when my hand isn’t being held.

Not sure what you mean by that. It is just sudo apt install lame. But considering that you actually can record stuff already, it’s very likely that lame is installed on your system (if it wasn’t, anki would display a popup when you try to record audio).

Sorry, I didn’t make it clear. I was referring to installing the beta Anki, as you suggested earlier.

Oh, I see. Here are the steps I’d recommend:

  1. Navigate to ~/.local/share/, find the Anki2/ folder and copy the entire folder to a separate and save location (e.g. into ~/Downloads/)
  2. Download the current release canditate from github: Release 25.01rc1 · ankitects/anki · GitHub (in your case the file for linux)
  3. Extract the downloaded file.
  4. Enter the newly created directory (you’ll see some files named anki, another folder named lib, ect).
  5. Run the executable file named anki (running the install.sh script shouldn’t be necessary. If you do install anki with that script, make sure to fully remove the current install of anki first).
  6. Test if microphone works fine now.
  7. After testing, delete ~/.local/share/Anki2/.
  8. Paste the Anki2/ from earlier (that you backed up in e.g. ~/Downloads/) to ~/.local/share/.
  9. Report back your findings.

I haven’t yet installed the beta, but by accident, I found that in my Ubuntu sound settings, when I try to record voice, a ‘Volume Levels’ bar for Anki appears – reasonable enough. When Anki tries to play back my recording, a ‘Volume Levels’ bar for MPlayer appears. So this leads me to believe that this might be an issue with MPlayer playing media from Anki.