Mic Not Working for Mac Mojave

[Ryanatorx]

When attempting to engage in a server with friends, one person could not get the game to detect their mic. Their OS was Mac Mojave, and this bug appears to have existed for quite some time!

[Buggy Boy]

Is this a built-in mic or something like a Logitech USB webcam mic?

[Ryanatorx]

Two mics, built in and an external mic, neither of them work.

Tinkered with mac settings for hours couldn't manage to get it functional

[Buggy Boy]

I take it both mics work in the Mac OS built-in applications?

I can't recall the exact title but there's a USB webcam standard that they can adhere to, something like Unified Communications Protocol, if your webcam is compliant to that standard then it ought to have a better chance of working with Barotrauma. I have the Logitech 910 which works fine with Baro on Windows 10, I would guess that the 920 should be fine too. I can try Baro on my old MacBook with the 910 but it's quite old and only has the onboard GPU working.

[Buggy Boy]

I may have found out the problem and a way to get around it...

First off, go to MacOS System Preferences and select the mic you want to use - either Internal Microphone or the USB mic (might be called Unknown USB Audio Device) - test it using the settings here and watch the Input level readout when you speak. Take note of the Type, the Internal Microphone is usually "Built-in", a USB mic is probably "USB".

Look in the files for Barotrauma - on MacOS (I have 10.13 High Sierra but it should be the same for later MacOS's) you can use Steam to Browse to Local Files (for Barotrauma), then right-click on the Barotrauma app icon and Show Contents, in the MacOS folder you should find config_player.xml, open this in TextEdit or some other plain text / code editor.

In the <audio section about 1/3 of the way down you should see the following line:
voicecapturedevice="Built-in_x0020_Input" - you can change this to "Built-in Input" though I'm not sure if this is necessary as it will get overwritten when Barotrauma is launched. This should work for the internal microphone, if you want to use the USB mic then change it to "USB".

Save the file then start Barotrauma, go to Settings and test the voicechat, it should recognise the device as "Built-in Input", "Built-in Microphone" or the device Name (as was shown in MacOS System Preferences) and you should see the bar move when you speak.

Good luck, let us know if this fixes the problem for you.

[Ryanatorx]

quote from the party of interest

"what i did:
Changed voicecapturedevice to "External Input"
opened game
switched to "voice activity"
it is now working
switched to "push-to-talk" "

Thank you so much for your help!

[Ryanatorx]

Unfortunate update: the problem re-appeared after re-launching the game and the exact same order of operations doesn't work the second round. Very unfortunate!

[pocl.v]

I'm the person with the technical issue, I'll try to describe what I'm doing as best I can:
The microphone I am trying to use works through the microphone port (not USB). Its name is "External Microphone" and the type is "Microphone port" in System Settings. It works in system settings and other applications fine.
The one time it did work, I:
-Changed voicecapturedevice to "External Input"
-Opened the game
-Switched to "voice activity"
-The game froze for 10-20 seconds, and my cursor shows it's loading. I saw a popup that says "Barotrauma would like to access the microphone.", and clicked "OK." (Barotrauma already has microphone permissions, so I'm not sure why it's asking again)
-Game unfreezes and the bar is moving. Seems to be working.

I closed the game after I saw the method worked. Then I came back tonight to play the game and found that it wasn't working anymore.
What I've been trying:
-Change voicecapturedevice to "External Input"
-Open the game
-Switch to "voice activity"
-Game freezes, I see it's loading, then the same popup as before comes up and I click "OK"
-Bar is not moving
-If I look at the XML file, I can see voicecapturedevice has been changed to "Built-in_x0020_Microphone"

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I can't get the built-in microphone to work either
Thank you for all your help so far!

[Buggy Boy]

Here's something you might try, and it could cause the game to crash or freeze so be ready for it... edit the xml file, save and close the file, then lock it so that it can't be overwritten.

[pocl.v]

Clever idea. It's prevented the overwriting, but it's still not working– the game still seems to "think" that a built-in microphone is being used.
The game didn't crash, but the debug console did appear and spit out a string of errors that began with "Saving game settings failed. (Access to the path '/Users...etcetc/config_player.xml' is denied.)" If I try to change any settings and save, I get an identical string of errors but no crash.
The console also had a line in green text that said "Built-in Microphone 19".
Switching from "Disabled" to "push-to-talk" again still makes the game pause and ask for microphone permission.

[pocl.v]

I don't know very much about computer audio, but I thought I might be able to solve the problem if I changed the name of the input itself, so I created an aggregate device in the Audio MIDI Setup app, checked "built-in microphone" and named the device to various names. None of them worked, but maybe there's a way to make this strategy work?
-When I named it "Built-in_x0020_Microphone": in the .xml file, voicecapturedevice changed to "Built-in_x005F_x0020_Microphone"
-When I named it to "Built-in_Microphone": voicecapturedevice changed to "Built-in_Microphone", but did not work
-When I named it to "Built-in Microphone": voicecapturedevice changed to "Built-in_x0020_Microphone"
-When I named it to "Blah": voicecapturedevice changed to "Blah", but did not work
I'm not sure why it doesn't work even when the name in the file and the actual name match. I tested out the aggregate device in discord to make sure it was picking up audio.

[Ryanatorx]

After further testing, the problem remains. Solutions that work ONLY work once, and then never again. If the bug was only appearing once, this wouldn't be a problem- but because its the solution only appearing once it's quite an issue. Any suggested solutions appreciate

[joey2pav]

Why don’t the developers just fix the bug?