PixelMetrics Newsletter – Is this microphone on?

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Is this microphone on?
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We've noticed computer microphones seem to quit at the worst times. Like when answering VOIP calls or starting a web conference and the other party hears nothing but silence. You can scream so loud the microphone's covered with spit but it does no good - they're thousands of miles away and still can't hear you. What's up with that? Well, here's what we figured out and what to do about it.

First, we (we means me, Dave) keep forgetting all the little switches. There's often a mute switch on the microphone's wire or base. The switch is so small it's hard to tell its state. Does "on" mean "muted", off, or on - who knows? When you figure it out, cover it with tape.

Then, we have a nice switch for switching the computer's audio output between the computer's speakers, our stereo system or a headset. Despite the complexity, we can't give up the great sound of free Pandora.com internet radio over the high-power stereo system. But darn, that switches OFF the headset microphone.

Now for the more difficult problems. We test a lot of multi-media software. Bad programs do two things that mess up microphones. First, they change the default recording channel. Here's how to change it back:

1 Click Windows Start / Control Panel / Sounds and Audio Devices.
2 Click the Audio tab.
3 Under Sound Recording, click the Volume button.
4 Under the Microphone channel, click Select.

Second, rogue programs may permanently install a custom audio driver. Here's how to switch back to your audio card's default driver:

1 Click Windows Start / Control Panel / Sounds and Audio Devices.
2 Click the Audio tab.
3 Under Sound Recording, Default device, select your audio card.

You may have to restart the computer for the changes to take effect.

Finally, even if all the settings are correct, audio cards sometimes act, shall we say, funny, illogically, unpredictably.

We were thrilled to finally figure out how to fix the microphone channel on one computer's SoundBlaster card. It would never work if, when the computer shut down, the recording channel was set to What-You-Hear, a common occurrence. Start the computer, select the Microphone channel, and it wouldn't work. Big :-(

What's the fix? Simple. Just select any channel OTHER THAN MICROPHONE, then immediately select the Microphone channel. That's it! Strange, but it works, who knows why? Maybe it'll work for your audio card.

Here're answers to common screen capture questions:
http://pixelmetrics.com/Tips/Tips.htm

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