However, you can control the system side using the PulseAudio Volume Control application (not installed by default). Sometimes the problem depends on the settings in your recording application. If it was picked up on the earphone mic it would be of noticeably low quality The audio which is looping back is very clear.Laptop somehow still picked up the system output which is only possible if it was looping it back. connected earphones through a splitter so that the mic input from the earphones get ignored.tried using different headphones/earphones.How I know that it's a software problem and not a mic/headphone problem: Livecd doesn't pick up the headphone audio, Laptop only does this after installing which makes me think this is a driver/kernel issue (that I don't know how to fix) reinstalled pulseaudio and alsa after removing them.I am on Kubuntu 20.10 running on a nvidia optimus laptop (acer predator 300 to be exact). Output also doesn't work after I reboot (no speaker in tray) but I can fix that with a pulseaudio -k - Edit: this doesn't happen anymore after reinstalling kubuntu I've tried reinstalling alsa and pulseaudio and that didn't fix it.