Xquizite

Hey, just recently I have been having some problems with my sound/headset/microphone.

Before the problem started, I had an audio port extender (those small black adapters) plugged into my sound card with my ANALOG headset/microphone plugged into that.

But, I recently reinstalled my sound card drivers and then updated them, and now I am having some problems. The reason I reinstalled/updated the drivers was because people on Ventriloo would say that they could not hear me at times so I wanted to see if that would help.

Now, when I have my Headset plugged into my audio/mic port extender, I can hear Windows sounds fine and people on Ventrilo sound fine but they can't hear my voice. It almost feels like my "Pink" microphone plug has died out. So, I tried a few different things.

I have an Analog/USB adapter for my headset that allows me to plug my headset into the adapter which makes it now a USB headset. So, I plugged that in and plugged my headset into it and now I get sound and people say they can hear me, but the sound is a little different because I suspect that Windows is feeding my sound/input to and from my headset instead of from my Sound Card like how it was before I used the USB adapter.

Is there any way I can go back to the setup I was using before so I won't have to use the USB device and so that I can switch back to my sound card for my hardware device?

ibfcqvpnic

Time to upgrade your sound card? You have requested support without providing any make or model #'s for your headset or sound card.

smz

After you did the update, I'm sure it also reset your mixer settings. a common problem with people trying to communicate with the microphone is not realizing they need to open up the mixer, select recording properties and select only the microphone and make sure it's not muted. many have an advanced tab for a DB boost which I always enable.

That small combination can solve peoples issues 75% of the time.

Now to make sure you didn't take a step backwards with your sound drivers. Is your sound card on board or on a separate card? Can you provide us the make and model of the card if it's a separate card or the motherboard name and model if it's onboard. If you downloaded your drivers from the motherboard maker, they are almost always OLD and out of date and I point people to the chipset drivers which are always updated. The most common chipset nowadays seems to be Realtek. Let us know. We can't help if we don't know what you have.

Xquizite

I have tried messing with the audio properties and muting/unmuting the microphone (before when it worked normally, the microphone option was selected in the recording options and muted in the playback options).

I have also tried switching the audio mixers.

As for my sound card, it is a pretty new sound card (bought it about 3 months ago). It is a Creative X-FI Soundblaster and is not integrated on my motherboard. As for the drivers, I first installed the ones that came with my installation disc and then installed the ones that the Creative Auto-Update program recommended that I install. It even told me that if I continued with the auto-update that it would replace existing drivers.

My headset is an Altec Lansing (not sure exactly what kind other than that it is a behind-the-neck headset). If needed, I can look up the exacty type it is when I have the chance to

smz

is the headset a usb model or one that uses the sound card outputs... that was refreshing to hear you are using a true creative card. their support should be pretty good for even issues like this... it's a nightmare when someone's onboard sound has a problem... i mean who do you turn to when you need support... the m/b manufacturer didn't make the chipset and the chipset manufacturer doesn't deal with end users, lol.

Xquizite

The headset is generally one that uses the sound card outputs, but it did come with a USB adapter, which is what I switched to now so that my voice input would work.

I might try just removing the port extender and try plugging the headset directly into my sound card, but I have a feeling that isn't the problem

smz

I have never owned a headset that uses the USB connection but am I guessing it adds a sound device into windows and you need to change your default windows recording device to the Altec Lansing headset as opposed to setting it as microphone under the standard mixer? That is the only logical way I can see them doing it with USB. I mean even with printers that are all usb now, they still sort of do a legacy virtual driver to emulate the way things used to be with just a parallel cable.

I'm thinking that having the usb installed that there is zero chance of echo to the person on the other end. does it add another option to the creative labs mixer playback?

Xquizite

Yes, Windows does recognize the headset as a new device when I hook it up via USB.

I mean, even if I can just have it so that the sound that I receive is coming from my sound card and my voice input is coming from the headset, then I would be fine with that but when I tried to do so either my game sound wouldn't work or something was screwy.

I'll check the Creative Labs console next time I use it

Xquizite

Alright I tested a few things.

I tried 2 other different microphones (with the normal pink and green connections) connected directly to my sound card, and when I went to test hardware in my Sounds and Audio Devices in the CP, I was not able to hear myself on the voice playback.

So, it has to be a software or hardware issue with my Sound Card. I did try reinstalling the drivers, so maybe sometime I will try just completely uninstalling my sound card and making sure there are no traces of its installment on my computer and then try installing it again as if it were out of the box.

Other than that, I don't know what else I can do.

smz

That seems a bit odd. I have seen strange behaviors with accessing the same sound device with different applications using windows 2000 and lower. A matter a fact the Internet radio station I run uses software that is capable of running on windows 2000, but i was running server at the time and found that windows 2000 in general wouldn't support true directsound. that's another thing to consider is whatever apps are you running that if you have a choice out output that you choose direct sound as opposed to the non cooperative wave output.

Xquizite

yeah, thats the thing... I use Ventrilo and it lets you switch to either use Direct Sound or not to use direct sound but I've tried it before and it doesn't seem to do anything.

I'll let you know over the weekend if I can figure it out or if anything related comes up.

smz

I was almost thinking that creative would have a software app include not on the web but on the install cd for easy management of input and output devices and perhaps a way to change them on the fly. I could be wrong, but I've seen some nifty options with some of their software.

Xquizite

Ok, I went into my Device Manager and I noticed that there was a yellow question mark next to the "Other Devices" tree.

When I expanded the tree, it showed a yellow question mark next to "Media Audio Controller" or something like that.

But, when I when I expand my "Sound, video and game controllers" tree, it shows that my Creative SB X-Fi drivers are there along with my Legacy drivers (which I presume is my motherboard sound) and some audio/video codecs.

I disabled the device with the yellow question mark and I even right clicked it and uninstalled it, but that didn't seem to fix anything.

Hope this could be of some help in solving the issue

smz

take your creative labs drivers and extract them into a temp directory. this is a funny thing that happens with their cards sometimes....

once you have just the raw directory (note you may run the exe and default extraction directory is your temp drive)

I right click unknown device and choose properties and then under driver, you update driver by pointing to that extracted directory. this is has found a way to fix several creative cards in the past.

now for a real stupid question, you don't have onboard sound enabled in the bios do you?

Xquizite

I'm pretty sure it is disabled but next time I restart my PC I'll check it out. If it really is disabled, then I'll try extracting the drivers to that temp directory and such

smz

let me know if you have any issues extracting the drivers into a temp directory... creative has a strange installer. if you run into issues, I can zip up the temp directory for you and give you a link to download it. (my partner and I have a hosting account with 1TB of bandwidth a month that we have never flirted with)