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How to get the Open-Mic work on Linux

By P4NCH1

If you are playing the game through Proton and you are trying to get all achievements or just want to play using the "Open Mic" feature and you keep getting the (-1) error message or when it works it keeps echoing like you put a mic in front of your speakers, here is a fast and temporary workaround to get that Challenge achievements or just to activate it when you want to play with music from youtube or spotify through your web browser or whatever app/site you like.

Award

Created by

P4NCH1
Offline

Category: Achievements, Game Modes, Modding or Configuration, Walkthroughs

Languages: English

Posted

19 Jul, 2023 @ 7:04am

36	Unique Visitors
1	Current Favorites

Guide Index

Overview

Will this guide help me?

What I will be doing?

What I need to know?

Ok, so how to do this?

TL;DR

Fun Fact

Comments

Will this guide help me?

If you have Linux Mint, for sure.
If you have any other debian-based distro (Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, etc), almost certain.
If you have a non debian-based distro, you will need to translate some commands to your own distro in question, like "sudo" without going any further.

What I will be doing?

You will add a temporary virtual audio device in order to get that output to be picked up by the game.
All changes will desapear on a system restart unless you tinker some more knowing what you are doing. It is NOT fun to mess up with audio settings on Linux.

What I need to know?

That your distro uses ALSA/PulseAudio (Linux Mint, for e.g.) and then no much more, just not being afraid of using a Linux Terminal for a bit.

Ok, so how to do this?

Launch parameters
First of all add "-Linux" to the launch parameters of the game on Steam to avoid error messages of the open-mic config when starting the game.

You can do this by right clicking on the game -> Properties -> General -> and on the "Launch parameters" text box just type "-Linux" without the quotes.
PulseAudio Volume Control
Second, you will need to have the package pavucontrol installed or install it if you don't, so lets do that asuming your distro is a debian-based:
sudo apt install pavucontrol

And then launch it. You should find it as "PulseAudio Volume Control") on the OS menu or you can do it from the terminal itself (as you like):
pavucontrol

There you will see various tabs and a lot of thing to tinker around, but what we are interested on is the "Output Devices" and the "Playback" tabs.
Output Devices tab
On this tab, set the bottom option as "Show: All Output Devices" and take a screenshot or remember what you can see there now so later you can identify fast the new output added
Add the temporary virtual audio device
Having pavucontrol open (for ease to identify the new output), on a terminal launch this command and, after typing you Linux user password, the "ALSA LoopBack virtual sound card" will be activated:
sudo modprobe snd-aloop
Back to Ouput Devices tab
You should now see a new output device called "Built-in Audio Analog Stereo" selected as "fallback". You'll have to select your original output device as "fallback" to avoid loosing all output audio at the moment, for that just click on the "Set as fallback" green tick button at the right of your real (hardware) audio output.
Then set the new "Built-in Audio Analog Stereo" output as "Port: Analog Output" if it's not already that way.
Playback tab
Now on this tab you will see all the aplications that are using any audio input/output at the moment. If you don't have any one running, now is the time for open that app (youtube on firefox, for e.g.), and then you'll only need to set that app to use "Built-in Audio Analog Stereo" as output (as shown on the next screenshot) and then launch the game to select that as the input of Open Mic
Launch the game
Go to "Manage Music" and then to "Open Mic Settings". If you see the same error (-1) as always just click OK. Go to "Line-In Audio", select "Monitor of Built-in Audio Analog Stereo" and there you are, if you already have music playing on the application that you selected to output from there, you should hear it in the game.
After playing
If you left pavucontrol open, you can change again the music app to your real/original audio output to be able to hear it again or you can just restart your system and all the changes will go away.

TL;DR

If you know what you are doing or you already did it and you want a short version, here it is:

Launch music source app (youtube on a web browser, for e.g.) and press play to have it outputting something
On Steam: right click on Beat Hazard 2 -> Properties -> Add "-Linux" to launch parameters (this change will and can be left as that)
On a terminal:
sudo modprobe snd-aloop && pavucontrol
On the Playback tab: set that app (firefox, for e.g.) to output on "Built-in Audio Analog Stereo".
On the Ouput Devices tab: re-set your real (hardware) audio card as default by clicking the "Set as fallback" green tick button on the right.
On the game: "Manage Music" -> "Open Mic Settings" -> "Line-In Audio" -> "Monitor of Built-in Audio Analog Stereo" -> Enjoy playing your music!
After playing: Change modified pavucontrol's settings like there where before or just close all, restart your system and all changes will go away.

Fun Fact

This way you can even play with the full audio of a movie, a chapter of a series or to someone streaming live on your desired streaming service :P

2 Comments

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TV late at Nite 18 Mar, 2024 @ 9:40pm

I used the system sound settings to set my output as my input and it worked under the line-in tab in-game (still gave the error for the others though). Mint 21.3

UnePouleSDF 15 Aug, 2023 @ 1:13pm

Thanks a lot :p

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