How To Set Up A Microphone
Typically, the microphone does not require any special settings and works immediately after connection. However, in some situations, tuning the microphone is still necessary, for example, if the microphone is too quiet or too loud. In this article, we will talk about how to configure a microphone on a computer using the Windows 7, 8, or 10 operating system.
How to set up a microphone on a computer
After connecting the microphone, you can begin to configure it. To do this, right-click on the speaker icon in the lower right corner of the screen and select “Recording Devices” in the menu that appears.
You can also access the microphone settings through the “Control Panel”. To do this, go to the “Control Panel” and open the “Hardware and Sound. Sound” section.
As a result, the sound window on the “Record” tab should open before you. This tab will display your microphone. In order to check how it works, just download something into it. If the microphone is working, then green bars will appear to the right of it, signaling the signal received from the microphone. If the microphone does not work, then the bars will remain gray.
Here you can also disconnect the microphone at the software level without physically disconnecting the microphone from the computer. To do this, right-click on the microphone and select “Disable” in the window that opens. The microphone turns on in exactly the same way.
In order to start tuning the microphone, select it in the list and click on the “Properties” button. You can also right-click on it and select the “Properties” item in the menu that appears.
After switching to the microphone properties, a new window should appear on the screen. Several tabs with microphone settings are available in this window. We will look at all the settings available here in order. On the first tab, called “General,” you can rename the microphone, assign it a different icon, open a window with the settings for the sound card driver, or mute the microphone.
The next tab is called Listen. Here you can configure the sound redirection from the microphone to the speakers. To do this, just turn on the “Listen from this device” function. Here you can also configure the behavior of this function when working on battery power, which will be useful only if you have a laptop.
The next tab is “Levels”. Here are two of the most useful microphone settings. The first function is called “Microphone”. it is simply the volume of the microphone. In most cases, a value of 100 is suitable. The second function, “Microphone Gain,” here in most cases, a value of 20 dB is suitable. But, here everything is more individual. If your microphone records sound too quietly, feel free to set it to 30 dB, if on the contrary the microphone is too sensitive and the sound is too loud, then the microphone gain level can be reduced to 10 dB or even to zero.
The next tab is called Enchancements or Enhancements. The settings that are available here depend on the model of the sound card and its driver. For example, on my computer there is only one option available: “Disable all enhancements”.
But, usually on the “Improvements” tab, microphone settings are available that are responsible for sound effects and noise reduction.
Well, on the last tab, which is called “Advanced”, you can adjust the bit depth and frequency of microphone discredit. In addition, here you can configure exclusive microphone mode
Also on the tab “Advanced” there is a button “Default”, which returns all the settings on this tab to the default.
How to set up a microphone through a sound card driver
You can also configure the microphone through the sound card driver. But, the settings that are available here almost completely duplicate the standard Windows settings discussed above.
In order to open the settings for the sound card driver, go to the “Control Panel” and open the “Hardware and Sound” section. A module for managing the sound card should be available here. In the screenshot below it is “VIA HD Audio Desk”, but on your computer this module may be called differently.
After opening this module, go to the “Microphone” section and see the same settings that we considered earlier. These are “Microphone Volume” and “Microphone Gain”.
If you go to the second tab of the microphone settings, then you can change the “Discredit Frequency” and “Bit Resolution”.
When changing settings through the sound card driver, they change in the settings of the Windows microphone.
