Microphones

The microphone settings are only in Home Assistant, on the device’s microphone sub-device and in the card’s Microphone panel. They stay on the device: config sync doesn’t copy them.

Setting	Entity	What it does	Range	Default
Microphone mixing	select.<device>_microphone_microphone_mixing	How the microphones are combined. Center mic uses one; on the Echo Dot’s seven-microphone array, Delay and sum, and Beamformer where the Echo’s own beamformer tuning is present, aim at whoever is speaking	Center mic, Delay and sum, Beamformer	Center mic
Microphone gain	number.<device>_microphone_microphone_gain	Amplification before anything else	0–59 dB	20 dB
Microphone leveling	switch.<device>_microphone_microphone_leveling	Keeps your voice at a steady level whether you’re near or across the room	On, Off	On
Microphone echo cancellation	switch.<device>_microphone_microphone_echo_cancellation	Removes what the speaker is playing from what the microphones hear, so the wake word works while music plays	On, Off	On
Room sensitivity	number.<device>_microphone_room_sensitivity	How much louder than the room’s background noise a sound has to be before the ring or the listening visual reacts	4–20 dB	8 dB
Mute sound	select.<device>_microphone_mute_sound	The sound when the mute button is pressed	Chimes, Mute tones, custom tones	Mute tones

The Echo Shows offer only Center mic mixing.

The room’s sound level and noise floor are sensors (room_level, room_floor), which help when tuning.

Tuning

• The wake word misses you from across the room. Make the wake word easier to trigger first: lower Wake word sensitivity in Home Assistant, or raise its slider on the screen; then raise Microphone gain a few dB at a time. Keep Microphone leveling on.
• It wakes on its own, or on the TV. Make the wake word harder to trigger: raise Wake word sensitivity in Home Assistant, or lower its slider on the screen. Keep Microphone echo cancellation on so the device doesn’t hear its own music.
• It cuts you off, or keeps listening too long. Adjust Max listening time, and Room sensitivity if the room is loud.
• Voices sound distorted in the recordings. Lower Microphone gain.

What the visuals hear

The screen saver’s visuals listen to the same microphone signal, after echo cancellation, so music from the speaker barely moves them while your voice does. Visualizer lift (visualizer_lift, 0–40 dB) adds gain for the visuals only, without changing what the wake word hears.

Note

Muting with the button cuts the microphones in hardware. When they come back, the first moments can make the visuals jump; that’s the microphones powering up, not sound in the room.