Click Muter for Jack

Copyright Erkki Seppälä erkki.seppala@vincit.fi 2021

Licensed under the MIT license.

A tool for helping with teleconferencing, when you have loud input devices. Such as a mechanical keyboard..

It works by inputting a jack stream from microphone, and then directly connecting all key-producing devices from /dev/input. Then when an input arrives, its timing is checked and muting is applied for the pre-configured duration. Finally the module outputs a jack stream that can be used in place of the microphone.

But that's not all! Not only is it able to mute the clicks, it's also able to unmute the clicks and mute everything else. With a click of a button you can let your colleagues enjoy the sweet sounds of your keyboard rig, while not being distracted by your other sounds, or speech. Use the "Invert muting" function for this.

To work this of course needs a short delay. For me a 45-millisecond buffer is enough, and Pipewire is configured with PIPEWIRE_LATENCY=128/48000.

Installation

If the Ubuntu 20.04 -based binary on the GitHub releases page works for you, maybe use that? Otherwise:

sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl file \
    build-essential autoconf automake autotools-dev \
	libtool xutils-dev libssl-dev git pkg-config \
	libncurses-dev

2. Install the Rust compiler with Cargo e.g. with https://rustup.rs/

3. sudo apt-get install libglvnd-dev libxi-dev libjack-jackd2-dev

4. cargo install --git https://github.com/eras/ClickMuteJack

5. $HOME/.cargo/bin/click_mute has now been installed

Setting it up with Pipewire

1. create a source that is visible in the PulseAudio side:

pactl load-module module-null-sink                   \
                  media.class=Audio/Source/Virtual   \
                  sink_name=my-source                \
                  channel_map=front-left,front-right

2. Set up the qjackctl patchbay so that click_mute is connected to my-source input and your microphone is connected to click_mute input and activate the patchbay.

3. Set my-source as the default input in your audio control tool, such as pavucontrol

4. Maybe restart your browser to re-enumerate audio devices; it seems the pactl command does not cause a plug-in event to make it happen automatically.

5. Boom, you can use https://online-voice-recorder.com/ to test if it works.

If you just want to test (even more) locally, instead connect the click_mute output directly to your speakers. Be aware that this can cause an audio loop.

Results not satisfactory? Adjust the parameters mute_offset_seconds and mute_duration_seconds in click_mute.rs.

Configuring

The current settings can be saved (as they are loaded) with the Save-button to click_mute.ini in the XDG directory, so likely $HOME/.config/click_mute/. However, if a click_mute.ini exists in the current working directory, it will be used instead, for both loading and saving. You can find the defaults from click_mute.ini.example.

You may change the configuration file to use with the --config switch. --help works also.

Parameters

mute_offset: number of seconds from the reception of the keyboard event, to the time when we fade the microphone out. Due to delays involved, this number can be negative. The default value is -0.045, so 45 milliseconds before the event, and it's a number that works on my setup.

mute_duration: for how many seconds to mute the mic? 0.05, or 50 milliseconds, works for me.

fade: abruptly adjusting volume results in popping sound, so this tells how many seconds to spend in fading in/out. A small value like 0.010 for 10 milliseconds is good.