Mic won't shut off

[jneiberger]

I have a new machine running Vista64 on an MSI x58 Platinum mobo. I have a microphone connected to one of the front inputs that never, ever shuts off. I've tried muting that device in my Windows sound settings as well as in my Realtek Audio Control Panel, but the mic stays on and I can hear it coming through my speakers. I've even tried disabling it entirely in Windows and it still won't turn off!

I only want audio from my mic to play from the speakers if there is an application running that is configured to do that. Otherwise, I don't want it on. This thing seems to want to be on no matter what I change.

Any thoughts?

 

[linney]

Are you using any Speech Recognition software?

Do you have an alternate connection at the rear of the computer that you can connect to?

 

[jneiberger]

I'm not using speech rec. There is a connection on the back. I should give it a whirl. It's just so weird that the darn thing won't turn off, even if I disable it in Windows.

 

[linney]

The only other thing that I can think of is that maybe you have more than one microphone attached and are configuring the wrong one. These days it is not unusual to have microphones in webcams or built in to the computer (laptops).

When you right-click on the sound icon in the Notification Area, and select "Recording Devices", and then again right-click, on a blank area of the resulting Properties page and then select options to show both Disabled and Disconnected Devices, how many microphones do you have listed there?

 

[jneiberger]

I do have two mics, one actual standalone mic and one on a webcam. I did double- and triple-check that I'm configuring the correct one. But I'll quadruple-check it. It has to be a configuration problem somewhere, so it could be something like that.

 

[jneiberger]

I'm definitely configuring the right one. I just tried something that I think fixed it. In the microphone setup, there is a slider for recording volume and playback volume. I've been muting the recording volume, but that wasn't working. I just muted the playback volume (for the mic only) and that seems to have done it.

It's strange that muting it at the input didn't work. Very odd.