Headset & Mic Settings
Hi, I fixed a headset with mic to my soundcard in orde to talk on Yahoo Instant Messenger. I am able to hear the other person on Instant messenger but as soon as I fix the mic to the back of the soundcard (in) I get a lot of disturbance in my headset. Although I am able to talk and the person on the other end is able to hear me, there is lot of disturbance when the mic is connected. Does anyone know what is the problem and is there ne solution to it? Maybe some setting needs to be changed? I am using Win98 SE.
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There are a couple of possibilities-- but, the most obvious is a ground short. I got feedback like that, and it turned out the jacks for boht the ehadphone and the mic were a tib too long. The fix??? Right now I have an o-ring at the base of the jacks, it is 3-32" thick and was sold to me as a plumbing O-Ring. Try gently easing the mic jack out of the socket very slowly while talking, see if your buzz just vaporizes. If not, ease the speaker\earphone jack out just a tib, then slowly. BET you get a drop in distortion if you have a full-duplex capable sound card. Also, dropping SPEAKER volume can help some. AND make sure the mic is not plugged into the LINE-IN AUX connector on sound card if yuo have both. THOSE are the quick easy fixes that have worked in past for me on many computers and sound system problems with 1\8" plugs\jacks into devices. It is possible to get the sockets mfr'd to metric specs, the plug\jacks to english specs, or vice versa.
Then length of each part of a stereo connector can end up offset on one or another. The far east uses metric more. US mfrs can use English inch parts more. Could be that simple. You can get a ground short with one channel of input bridging ground and a channel, that will cause interference feedback that can sound like an AC buzz, but can happen because the metric and english specs are not perfectly meshing. This happens here with Radio Shack stereo audio extension cables for 1\8" spec also, and has happened with same cable on several computers.
Exact spec on the o-ring I use is 5\16" OD, 1\8" ID, and it is 3\32" thick in rubber diameter. You can stop most of the interference with a flat fiber orange washer and a 1\4" OD by 1\8" ID O-ring pushed aginst each other with both pushed to base of jack\plug. The other possibility is that on cheaper sound card, that the sockets have one finger contact a bit bent. There is no easy fix for that whihc does not take a lot of fiddling. Real old sound cards could be half-duplex, but that normally casued a bunch of cutouts of one way then the other, with boht sides losing part of what other said when talking. Normally a buzz is a BAD ground or a short to ground in part of an active signal line that is input side. In my cases, it was BOTH jacks mismatching the sockets as to length.
I've had this with VCR recording CAMERAS (digital motion picture cameras) which we were trying to hook an audio headphone set designed for normal house audio and then a sound system adapter and line leveler to feed cound from camera onto a digital camera used for VCR and some video uses also. Both times, we had to put something on back\butt end (where jack disappears into connector insulation) of male jack to keep it from going too far INTO socket. I know of about 25 times this has happened, same fix, shim the back\butt end of the jack with something non-conductive adn if it is the right thickness the AC like buzz vanishes. Since I can also manage to get one channel out my headphones this way, it might have to do with too long a jack\plug on your audio connectors on end of your mic\headset cord, or even a standing up mic and speakers. I've also seen a solder bridge from bad solder joint make soem interference, so I would say try this shimming trick first, then try different headset with earphones and mic.
IF it only happens AT ALL when mic is plugged in, might be only mic jack that is not to spec for socket that goes through sound card riser, or using the wrong socket to plug mic into. you cna also do this if you have boht speakers and a headset plugged in to soem sound cards, with one socket switched to rear from Aux-In-- and some sound cards do this and only buzz when mic is plugged in. So there is no one guaranteed universal fix, but the simple shim fix has worked a LOT of the time. Both on PCs AND regular sound systems where 1\8" jacks are used for headphones and\or mics.