On Wed, 2020-11-11 at 13:09 +0000, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
What I don't really understand is how my cheap Lenovo tablet works acceptably well and my big Fedora desktop doesn't. I'm sure the camera and mic in the tablet can't be especially high quality.
Luck of the draw, perhaps. Some mobile phones have surprisingly good microphones (usually the expensive ones). I had one with good noise reduction systems using two microphones in combination, and handled loud environments quite well, too. They're probably used in tablets, too.