How to increase microphone sensitivity?

dogfonos

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Would appreciate advice or suggestions on the following issue...

I recently purchased a USB headset with inbuilt microphone:


I have set microphone volume control to 100% and adjusted the boom so the microphone sits very close to my mouth but it is still a little too quiet. Is there a way to increase/boost the microphone's sensitivity?

I have another, separate microphone and Windows 10 allows me to boost microphone sensitivity by +10dB, +20dB or +30dB (Settings>Sound>Sound Control Panel>Microphone Properties>Levels>Boost) but this 'Boost' feature isn't offered when I connect the USB headset with microphone.
 
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Sadly I think you might have invested in a product that will not do what you want it to do. No manufacturer's name and the price level kind of says it all. If you were to trace this back, sadly you will most probably discover a cheap Chinese product with no real capabilities.

If not to late, do yourself a favour and return it as a product not working or not fit for purpose.
 
Thanks for your response, techquest.

The headset+mic is certainly an unknown brand Chinese cheapie - I appreciated that when I purchased it. What I wasn't expecting was the decent sound quality over both headphones and, I'm told, microphone too. The microphone is just a little too quite - it's not a disaster - but even with all volume controls max'd out, I would like a bit more volume if possible.

Do you know of any other USB connected headsets+mic where I could boost mic. volume over and above max'ing out the usual volume controls?
 
You don’t seem to be alone when it comes to USB mic level problems in Windows 10. The advice in the final post of the thread below might st least be worth a try.

 
You don’t seem to be alone when it comes to USB mic level problems in Windows 10. The advice in the final post of the thread below might st least be worth a try.


It may be I have a slightly different issue with my USB mic. At present, the sound quality is good but a bit too quiet - it's certainly not distorted, as mentioned in the linked thread. I checked out the Microphone Properties settings again and mine were already set as advised in the linked thread. Think I'll just have to speak up a bit.

I intend to ditch Windows 10 in the not too distant, as soon as I get comfortable with Ubuntu (currently trialling) as W10 has proved to be a poor excuse for an operating system. I'll test out the headset+mic with Ubuntu because Ubuntu has already proven more capable with my peripherals than W10. Having come from Windows 7, I know Microsoft can make a good OS, which makes W10 inexcusable.
 
Determined not to be beaten, it seems there are two pieces of software which will apparently help you make a change to the registry to boost the audio volume. This slightly rambling YouTube video may be of some help.

 
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I intend to ditch Windows 10 in the not too distant, as soon as I get comfortable with Ubuntu (currently trialling) as W10 has proved to be a poor excuse for an operating system. I'll test out the headset+mic with Ubuntu because Ubuntu has already proven more capable with my peripherals than W10. Having come from Windows 7, I know Microsoft can make a good OS, which makes W10 inexcusable.

I can tell you you will never look back. It's quicker and more robust than windows. It also has some very clever add on s/w that will give you better sound than the windows offering. Ask @rallychief what he thinks after I converted him to Ubuntu. He has never looked back, never had to do anything since we put it on his machine.

You can try it off of a USB stick which gives you a system you can look at and then if you like it you just ask the USB to install it on your system. It will then create a dual boot system for you that will walk all over windows.

Here's a link to help you get there. You can try out as many times as you like and if you get on with it you can then ask the next time you boot to install it on your system. It will install and give you a dual boot system and then you have both OS's to work with. It will not have any effect on your current W10 OS whatsoever.

Try Ubuntu before you install it | Ubuntu

If you need help, let us know.
 
You can try it off of a USB stick which gives you a system you can look at...

That's exactly what I'm doing at present!

...if you like it you just ask the USB to install it on your system. It will then create a dual boot system for you that will walk all over windows.

And that's what I intend to do.

When I first started using W10 (only last year), I thought: it must be me, other folk seem to like it, I'll give it time, with more familiarity, it'll grow on me. Quite the reverse has happened. It's gone from bad to worse. If I could be bothered, I could list maybe a hundred aspects where W10 falls down in comparison to a decent OS system like W7. I can honestly say that W10 is, by some distance, the most disjointed, high-maintenance, erratic, confusing, unintuitive, illogical, intransigent, wilfully unhelpful, peripheral-unfriendly Operating System ever to pollute one of my desktop PC's. If someone designed an OS just to wind people up, it would look and behave a lot like W10.

What has initially impressed me about Ubuntu is it's ability to just get on with it, e.g. Libre Office instantly recognised a document in an old Microsoft word processing file format (.wri) and presented it perfectly. MS Office couldn't manage that. And Ubuntu works perfectly with my HP Photosmart printer without any setting up whatsoever. I wasted many days trying to set up the printer in W10 and it still refused to print, even though I received extensive help from lovely folk over on the excellent 'Ten Forums' (as I did with several other W10 issues).

Ideally, I'd like to wipe all traces of W10 from my PC and re-install W7 as dual boot with Ubuntu. I appreciate W7 is unsupported but for the home user who works in isolation, I'm not sure that matters too much.
 
Determined not to be beaten, it seems there are two pieces of software which will apparently help you make a change to the registry to boost the audio volume. This slightly rambling YouTube video may be of some help.

Thanks for the link. I'll have a dabble and report back.
 
What has initially impressed me about Ubuntu is it's ability to just get on with it, e.g. Libre Office instantly recognised a document in an old Microsoft word processing file format (.wri) and presented it perfectly. MS Office couldn't manage that.

Microsoft Word used .doc from the start as far as I'm aware. .wri was an extension used for the Microsoft Write program included with DOS and early versions of Windows. Write was discontinued over twenty five years ago, it got replaced by Wordpad in Windows 95.

Criticising Microsoft because they 'only' gave you two decades of post-application support for a document format is silly.
 
That's exactly what I'm doing at present!



And that's what I intend to do.

When I first started using W10 (only last year), I thought: it must be me, other folk seem to like it, I'll give it time, with more familiarity, it'll grow on me. Quite the reverse has happened. It's gone from bad to worse. If I could be bothered, I could list maybe a hundred aspects where W10 falls down in comparison to a decent OS system like W7. I can honestly say that W10 is, by some distance, the most disjointed, high-maintenance, erratic, confusing, unintuitive, illogical, intransigent, wilfully unhelpful, peripheral-unfriendly Operating System ever to pollute one of my desktop PC's. If someone designed an OS just to wind people up, it would look and behave a lot like W10.

What has initially impressed me about Ubuntu is it's ability to just get on with it, e.g. Libre Office instantly recognised a document in an old Microsoft word processing file format (.wri) and presented it perfectly. MS Office couldn't manage that. And Ubuntu works perfectly with my HP Photosmart printer without any setting up whatsoever. I wasted many days trying to set up the printer in W10 and it still refused to print, even though I received extensive help from lovely folk over on the excellent 'Ten Forums' (as I did with several other W10 issues).

Ideally, I'd like to wipe all traces of W10 from my PC and re-install W7 as dual boot with Ubuntu. I appreciate W7 is unsupported but for the home user who works in isolation, I'm not sure that matters too much.

I can help you get back to W7 if you want too, no problems. You could also set W10 to act like W7. The security of W7 is only an issue for those continually on line as the security side of it is no longer being supported, so they say :rotfl:

Linux is much easier to get on with, less intrusive, less likely to have security issues, stable, fast, free, loads of apps and a damn good OS. As I said dual boot is no problem, W7 or W10. So if you're not sure just let us know and we can help you, it would take all of 10 mins to sort it.

If you get stuck with anything Ubuntu then let us know, PM if needs be.
 
Microsoft Word used .doc from the start as far as I'm aware. .wri was an extension used for the Microsoft Write program included with DOS and early versions of Windows. Write was discontinued over twenty five years ago, it got replaced by Wordpad in Windows 95.

Criticising Microsoft because they 'only' gave you two decades of post-application support for a document format is silly.

Guess we are all different in the way we deal with or express our issues and some folk find change not easy to handle, no matter how things get improved by the evolutionary process, even if for the better. Such is life :)
 
I can help you get back to W7 if you want too, no problems. You could also set W10 to act like W7. The security of W7 is only an issue for those continually on line as the security side of it is no longer being supported, so they say :rotfl:

Linux is much easier to get on with, less intrusive, less likely to have security issues, stable, fast, free, loads of apps and a damn good OS. As I said dual boot is no problem, W7 or W10. So if you're not sure just let us know and we can help you, it would take all of 10 mins to sort it.

If you get stuck with anything Ubuntu then let us know, PM if needs be.

Thanks, very kind of you. I may take you up on that.

Microsoft Word used .doc from the start as far as I'm aware. .wri was an extension used for the Microsoft Write program included with DOS and early versions of Windows

You're right, I mistyped. The early Microsoft WP software that used the .wri file extension would have been Microsoft Write in Windows 3.1.

Criticising Microsoft because they 'only' gave you two decades of post-application support for a document format is silly.

Did I criticise Microsoft or did I praise Libre Office? Are you a glass half-full or half-empty kind of person?
 
Would appreciate advice or suggestions on the following issue...

I recently purchased a USB headset with inbuilt microphone:


I have set microphone volume control to 100% and adjusted the boom so the microphone sits very close to my mouth but it is still a little too quiet. Is there a way to increase/boost the microphone's sensitivity?

I have another, separate microphone and Windows 10 allows me to boost microphone sensitivity by +10dB, +20dB or +30dB (Settings>Sound>Sound Control Panel>Microphone Properties>Levels>Boost) but this 'Boost' feature isn't offered when I connect the USB headset with microphone.

It might be a better idea to get a decent desktop mic with gain control, although it's more expensive and less portable. Alternatively, you might be able to find a cheap gaming headset at Walmart or Target that can control volume and output.
 
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