> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.getrivet.ca/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Audio issues
> Echo, one-way audio, garbled voice, mic muted by the OS — the practical fixes for every audio problem in a Rivet session.
Audio is the single most important thing in a clinical session. Most
audio problems have a one-step fix. Try the obvious thing first; the
exotic causes are at the bottom of this page.
## Echo — you hear your own voice come back
Almost always the same cause: somebody (you or the client) isn't wearing
headphones, so their mic picks up your voice from their speakers and
sends it back to you.
**Fix:** Put on headphones. AirPods, wired earbuds, anything that
separates the mic from the speaker. Ask your client to do the same.
If the echo is on your side and you're already wearing headphones,
double-check that your laptop hasn't switched the audio output to its
built-in speakers (the macOS audio menu sometimes flips after a Bluetooth
hiccup). Switch it back to your headphones.
Rivet's built-in echo cancellation, noise suppression, and auto-gain
control work by default. They handle mild echo well, but they can't
fully cancel a client across the room with their phone on speaker —
that's a physics problem, not a software setting.
## One-way audio — they hear you but you don't hear them
Two common causes, in order of likelihood:
Most common. The client tapped Join before granting microphone
permission, the prompt got dismissed, and now their mic is muted at
the browser level. Ask them to look for a mic-with-a-slash icon in
the address bar, click it, and allow microphone access — then refresh
the page and rejoin.
On Mac and Windows, the keyboard mic-mute key (often F4 or a function
row toggle) silences the mic at the OS level. The browser shows the
mic as active but no audio reaches the call. Pressing the key again
unmutes it.
If neither fixes it, ask the client to leave the session and rejoin —
the most reliable recovery for a stuck audio track is closing the tab
and tapping the waiting-room link again.
## Garbled or robotic voice
Almost always a bandwidth problem. Audio quality drops when the
connection can't keep up.
**Quick checks:**
* Are they on Wi-Fi? Ask them to move closer to the router. Wi-Fi
strength drops sharply more than 15 feet from the access point.
* Are they on cellular? 4G is fine; spotty 4G isn't. If you can hear
them clearly between drops, the network is the problem, not the
hardware.
* Is something else on the network downloading? A family member's
Netflix stream on the same Wi-Fi can saturate the link.
**Fix:** Move to a better network if possible. If not, both of you turn
off your video — audio-only uses about a tenth of the bandwidth and
usually stays clear when video can't.
## Echo cancellation off — you hear yourself faintly
Some Bluetooth headsets (older Jabra, some Plantronics models) put
themselves into a "music" profile when the browser starts a call. In
music profile, echo cancellation is disabled because music doesn't need
it.
**Fix:** Disconnect and reconnect the headset, or end the call and
restart it. Both force the OS to renegotiate the audio profile, which
usually drops the device back into the call-optimised "handsfree"
profile.
## macOS sample-rate mismatch (the rare one)
If you're on a Mac with an external audio interface (a USB mic, a Focusrite
Scarlett, etc.), Audio MIDI Setup sometimes sets the device sample rate
to 96 kHz while the browser expects 48 kHz. The result is choppy or
pitched audio.
**Fix:** Open Audio MIDI Setup (Spotlight → Audio MIDI Setup), select
your input device, and set the Format to **48000.0 Hz**. Restart the
browser. Most users will never hit this — only Mac users with semi-pro
audio gear see it.
## Nothing helps — end the call and use the practice line
If audio is genuinely broken and you have a session running, end the
video call and call the client back on the practice line. Phone-line
audio is more reliable than browser audio. You lose the visual,
but the session continues. Reschedule a video session for next week and
investigate the setup at your own pace.
## Related articles
Camera-side problems — black screen, choppy video, wrong camera.
The client never reaches the session at all.