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Stop Skype Messing With Your Volume Behind Your Back

Filed Under Computers on December 1, 2007 at 11:20 pm

Skype has a feature called Automatic Gain Control which it uses to try to improve the audio quality of your call. When skype thinks your sound levels are not right it starts messing with your volume controls behind your back. Most of the time this works fine but not always. And when it gets things wrong you have a problem. There is no way to turn this feature off anymore! It used to be an option in older versions of Skype but not anymore. To be honest that's a pretty retarded thing for the Skype people to do. Myself and Allison Sheridan ran into this problem when we tried to record our weekly 'chit chat across the pond' segment for the NosillaCast podcast over skype. No matter what Allison did her levels always dropped too low. She'd put them just right and then within 20 seconds they'd be all wrong again. Took us a while to figure out what was causing this, but in the end we figured out that it was Skype's Automatic Gain Control 'feature'. It took a lot of Googling but Allison found the right answer in the end.

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To fix this problem you have to edit a file called shared.xml which in OS X you'll find in the Library/Application Support/Skype folder in your home folder. I have no idea where Skype hides this file on Windows so if you're on Windows you'll have to do a search. You need to open this file with a text editor (NOT a word processor, something that can read and edit plain text) and find the section starting with <VoiceEng>. Straight after that line you need to insert the following line:

<AGC>0</AGC>

BTW, if you wish to also disable echo cancelation you could do so by adding the following line in the same place:

<EC>0</EC>

Then just save this file. You should make this edit while Skype is not running.

Comments

15 Responses to “Stop Skype Messing With Your Volume Behind Your Back”

  1. Sam Caldwell on December 3rd, 2007 7:37 pm

    Thanks for the tip … I found even in the older version of Skype I could never fully disable auto gain control. Will give this work around a try.

    I have noticed lately that Skype audio seems very flaky. I am switching to Windows Messenger for most voice calls but of course this is only an option when using the Windows version of Messenger.

    The Audio is Windows Messenger is now generally far superior to Skype these days.

    Give my regards to Allison.

    Cheers
    Sam
    Windows 2 Apples

    P.S. I set up a site to track and promote the Zune player but had to abandon that when I found I could not recommend the Zune to most of my friends.

  2. Logan Serman on July 22nd, 2008 4:15 am

    You’re the man. I had the same problem and it was really bugging me as to what the problem.

    Google is always the answer it seems! Great fix, worked for me. My girlfriend and I both thank you ;)

  3. David Woolls on July 29th, 2008 3:16 pm

    I’m sorry this is not exactly a reply but have a similar problem to the persons above. My Imac, whenever I log into skype tells me in a womans voice ” user online” “user away” and then it will interrupt me when I am talking by saying the same things again. Even when I am in conversation.
    I have looked at ‘voice over’ bt that has never been switched on.
    Any help please on how to shut this thing up?
    Regards

    Thanks

    David

  4. Bart B on July 29th, 2008 3:27 pm

    When you set your status to “Do not Disturb” (the one with the ‘one-way’ icon) all sounds are disabled. If you do this while you’re on a call it should solve your biggest problem. You just have to remember to set yourself back to online afterwards or no one will be able to call you!

    Hope that’s some help,

    Bart.

  5. Harold on June 1st, 2009 3:02 am

    I’m running OS 10.5.7 and can’t find a Skype folder in Library/Application Support. I have the same audio problem: is there another solution?

  6. Bart B on June 1st, 2009 10:52 am

    Hi Hardold,

    It really should be there. Maybe my explanation was not clear. There is a system-wide Library folder too, but that’s not the one that will have the file, it’s the one in your home folder that should. If you start at Macintosh HD you go to Users then to the folder with the same name as your username (it will have a house icon), then to the Libary folder in there.

    If that doesn’t answer your question, can I ask what version of Skype you are running? I haven’t used the beta myself so if you’re using that one it’s possible things are different.

    Another small thing I can think of is that the folder will only be created after you run Skype for the first time as the user who’s settings you are trying to edit.

    Finally, if all-else fails, and if you’re not totally scared of the terminal, the following command should find the location for you:

    find ~/Library -name Skype -type d

    You’ll find the Terminal app in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder. Just copy and paste in the above command, it will find all folders called Skype in your Libary, where ever they happen to be hiding in there.

    Hope that helps,

    Bart.

  7. dave on July 28th, 2009 6:16 pm

    THANK YOU!

  8. ursula on January 6th, 2010 4:39 pm

    THANK YOU too!

  9. Nicolai Svendsen on January 24th, 2010 11:57 am

    Thanks a lot. I’ve had severe issues with this in 2.8. It works great now. I even screwed around with some of the Skype microphone settings and got some great results. Again, thanks a lot. This rocks.

  10. hronn on February 6th, 2010 11:56 am

    Hi

    I just report I had this problem (windows 7) and this was fixed the problem , like he said just
    find the shared.xml with search and modify the
    1 to 0 . thanks again .

  11. Andy on February 23rd, 2010 3:27 am

    Thank you so much!
    i was wondering for the longest time what was causing this spike in my audio, it would constantly turn my volume up and i would watch it shoot up during a call. you have saved me! once again thank you.

  12. John Anderson on April 17th, 2010 7:27 am

    Great fix, thanks very much.

  13. Glenn on April 26th, 2010 5:06 pm

    Hey Bart, Thanks a million. I host Practical Spirituality on spiritquestradio.com and was always having to re-adjust the volume down (Mac OS X 10.4) when using skype for my show.

    Used your solution and voila, no more self adjusting volume. YES!

  14. RTFM Education » Blog Archive » Stop Skype Messing With Your Volume Behind Your Back on the MAC! on May 5th, 2010 8:12 pm

    [...] http://www.bartbusschots.ie/blog/?p=609 [...]

  15. AJ on May 26th, 2010 11:32 pm

    You rock! Thanks for this… the automatic gain control was driving me crazy when I tried to record conversations.

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