Comment Feed for Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista? (TechOff on Channel 9)

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

SamInBama — Mon, 18 May 2009 01:54:13 GMT

I think we had the same problem, I found the fix. Go to http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/search.aspx?=&qu=connect+a+microphone+audio+device

The first choice should be what you need. Or here's the direct link (as of today): http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/b0e3d7fb-1b4a-4926-8254-65da289209261033.mspx

Good luck!

Sam

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

VistaMadeMeMac — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 18:47:57 GMT

Well I have to say I've been using a Mac Mini for the last 2 weeks and it has been bliss. Every thing just works. Unplug a monitor and plutg in new one and it just works. No idiotic messing around with settings. It just works.

And I have to tell you going back to my PC with Vista and having all these annoying problems when everything just works on the Mac makes me very, very sad for Microsoft. I've always thought of Macs as little toys, pretend computers, but now I know... they work. Unlike Vista. And they don't force us to buy their POS OS, Vista, just so they can charge us to downgrade to the OS we want, XP.

I'm a .Net developer and I've just about decided to switch to Mac's for development because Microsoft just hates us so much. They charge me $2,500 a year for the honor of developing for Microsoft but they keep stealing features away from me every year. Just 4 years ago my $2,500 bucks got me everything Microsoft made so I could do honest testing. Now they send me extra bills trying to trick me into paying more, then when I refuse to pay the fake bill they cancel my VALID PAYED FOR ACCOUNTS!!!

Yeah so sorry but I'm going to have to say goodbye to Microsoft. Vista is a nightmare and that idiotic Mohave commercial only angers us that have been force to use this POS. They show some moron that doesn't actuall get to USE Vista and they say, "Oh, that looks pretty. Vista is the bestest ever! You're just too stupid to realize it!" Yeah, and it doesn't work for poo.

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

RadGravity — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:38:02 GMT

Hi!

I have the same problem as some of you guys had with no volume on the mic playback . The problem is that i dont have the SoundMax soundcard in my HP notebook, its a Conexant soundcard. I have tried editing the installation files to enable Mic Playback/Monitor but cant fint the right values to change.

Have anyone tried this or could give me some hints what to change to get this working?

This is how the inf-file looks like in the Conexant installation files: http://somebody.se/temp/wisvenza.txt

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

J0hn — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 06:29:49 GMT

With respect, the only thing in front of me is the graphic you posted in your message.
As a software consult and someone who has been working in software development for over thirty years, I can assure you that there were no features/controls to allow monitoring sound on the microphone port on my machine until I applied the above registry change. In my particular case, these features were disabled when the SoundMax drivers were originally installed.

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

Mark Seymour — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:20:45 GMT

It's right at front of you. :p

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

J0hn — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:55:13 GMT

Hello,

Thanks KennsterDude...
thanks to your post I can now monitor recordings via my microphone port which I have been unable to do since I bought my laptop a year ago.

I have a Compaq/HP nx7400 running Windows XP SP2 and SoundMax.

I removed "HKR AD1981 Disable MicV" from the registry and rebooted. Now - for the first time ever - I have a Microphone Volume control on my Master Volume (playback) control panel which allows me to listen on the microphone port.

Thanks again

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

KennsterDude — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 03:40:04 GMT

Hello:

I found a solution to the problem listed elsewhere (and here) as SoundMax Input Audio Monitor or Missing "EnableInputMonitor" registry setting. I have an HP NC8430 (HP Business Notebook) originally purchased with Windows XP Pro, and later upgraded to Vista Business. My microphone also functioned properly in Windows XP, but to my chagrin, there was no documented way to enable the input audio monitor. As it turns out, there was apparently a group of people colluding in secret (recording industry and and other large notebook manufactures) to limit copying of music... best I can tell because this functionality turned out to be DELIBERATELY disabled in my notebook's driver setup... read on.

I downloaded and installed the Soundmax driver's from HP's web site thinking that the new driver would solve my similar problem (no input audio monitor so I could play Karaoke) ... I was in for a journey!!

I tried all sorts of fixes wherever I found a solution posted, the closest thing I found and the thing that led me to own fix was in this thread: http://www.notebookforums.com/thread193323.html
which starts:

"Well I don't know if this applies to Vista but here is how I solved the problem with my XP installation on an IBM that had no Stereo Mix on the record side, only Mic in.

Basically the software (driver) is built to do everything including Stereo Mix . They are all that way. Well most of them are as it's much easier to design a driver to do everything and then disable functions in a config file. Redesigning a driver is very expensive. Disabling the Stereo Mix is a requirement that is artificially imposed so you don't capture (steal) audio streams. "

First, my solution assumes that anyone searching for it has already read a whole freaking lot about this problem and is familiar with ALL of the other proposed solutions, and therefore doesn't cover everything (like where in the sound control panel you would enable the microphone, etc) just what I did to get mine working.

I downloaded and extracted Soundmax the driver from the HP site, opened the ADIHdAud.inf file in the i386 directory, and armed with the knowledge that these settings were most likely present in the .inf file and that they would be intentionally disabled, searched for the term "disable".

Low and behold, at line 597 was section "HpMobileCommon.AddReg", and lines 601 & 602 read:

HKR,AD1981\\Disable, "MonR", 1, 01 ; Disable Mono Out Record
HKR,AD1981\\Disable, "MicV", 1, 01 ; Disable Microphone Playback

which I simply commented out using semi colon:
;HKR,AD1981\\Disable, "MonR", 1, 01 ; Disable Mono Out Record
;HKR,AD1981\\Disable, "MicV", 1, 01 ; Disable Microphone Playback

Then, lines 604 & 605:
HKR,AD1981, MicR, 1, 0B; Set Mic Record Slider
HKR,AD1981, LinR, 1, 0B; Set Line In Record Slider

I changed to:
HKR,AD1981, MicR, 1, 01; Set Mic Record Slider
HKR,AD1981, LinR, 1, 01; Set Line In Record Slider

After making the above modifications, I reinstalled the audio driver, and whallaH! the Microphone Slider magically appeared (muted) on the Speakers => Levels tab!!!! After simply unmuting the microphone (a little button next to the slider) ... I was able to sing my heart out... (by myself thank you!) ...

I started this last night (Sat evening) at 4:30 PM hoping to bring my laptop to my friend's party for some Karaoke fun, and spent 1.5 hours on it with no luck. I started working on this again at 9:00 AM this morning... called HP Technical support (who were completely and totally utterly USELESS!!!!!) and spent an hour and a half having to repeat myself and talk sloooooowwwly and clearly over and over and over and over again answering the same stupid questions over and over... At my wits end, I gave up and went shopping with my friend.

When I got back and refreshed enough, I spent another 2 or so hours this evening on the solution.

My pain is your gain.

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

buggy123 — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:44:06 GMT

just another idea, get a peice of harware that allows you to plug your line in cable into the mic jack

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

buggy123 — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:40:57 GMT

under control panel > sound, if you select the recording tab, you can select wave out mix as the default recording device and can record what you hear. this feature might only be limited to certain sound cards. my sound card is a conexant high definition audio (not sure on specific model) , that came with my computer (and my computer came with vista)

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

julianekg — Sat, 26 May 2007 23:12:45 GMT

I had this same problem. Go to: http://fxaudioeditor.com/vista_recording_problems.htm
:D

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

sodapop — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 14:06:52 GMT

I had this same problem with Vista. I was using the onboard audio on my dell (SoundMax), and i had no options to set line-in output volumes. I went and purchased a $30 Creative Audigy SE card and installed the Creative Beta drivers and now I have options in the Vista Mixer to change line-in output volumes. So it appears it is a driver issue and not neccesarily a Vista issue. I do with the generic drivers that whipped with Vista had this support.

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

fucker — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 05:28:16 GMT

Not freeware :( but check out Power Mixer, a must for audio producers using Vista.

http://www.actualsolution.com/power_mixer/

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

Mike2K — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 02:28:51 GMT

It appears that there is no way to run the microphone into the speakers as you could with XP? (So you can hear yourself while using a pair of headphones and a microphone, for example.) In XP the control to do this was clearly there. I don't see it in Vista at all.

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

LaBomba — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 17:45:00 GMT

LarryOsterman wrote:

SecretSoftware wrote: Why does vista list in the Volume Mixer, all applications even though they might not be audio enabled? Why does it not detect the audio enabled ones and list them in the Volume Mixer?

An application won't show up in the mixer until it makes a sound. Every app in the mixer has made a sound at one point or another.

Does that include PC speaker?

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

LarryOsterman — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 17:28:58 GMT

SecretSoftware wrote:
Why does vista list in the Volume Mixer, all applications even though they might not be audio enabled? Why does it not detect the audio enabled ones and list them in the Volume Mixer?

An application won't show up in the mixer until it makes a sound. Every app in the mixer has made a sound at one point or another.

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

SecretSoftware — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 03:43:18 GMT

Why does vista list in the Volume Mixer, all applications even though they might not be audio enabled? Why does it not detect the audio enabled ones and list them in the Volume Mixer?

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

thenet411 — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 23:25:22 GMT

With some sound cards, there was a recording option to record "What You Hear", IOW, whatever was being send to the speakers. I haven't been able to locate this option in Vista. Is this yet another symptom of incomplete drivers?

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

DigitalDud — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 17:38:32 GMT

I wish you could disable jack sensing. If Vista "thinks" theres no speakers plugged in it will disable sound output altogether. I have a machine at work with pretty flaky jack sensing that will think there's nothing plugged in intermittently.

When this stuff works though its pretty cool. Vista remembers volume levels when headphones are plugged in and switches volume when you plug them in again.

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

dentaku — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 20:54:10 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:
What happens when you set Line-In as the default? Is Audition still unable to use it then?

I just set Line-In as default and now the little meter moves but the levels slider still does absolutely nothing and Audition still doesn't seem to know Line-In exists.

The only way to set the levels is the move the volume on the device that's playing the sounds (the MP3 player in my case) but that's not a big deal.

The Vista Sound Recorder picks up Line-In now but that tiny little meter is pretty useless for figuring out if your levels are set correctly. What you hear out of the speakers is just a signal going straight through your soundcard and out of the speakers. It's not the actual sound that's being recorded. Your recording could be too loud or too quiet but you'll never know until you listen to the file you just made.

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

dentaku — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 02:09:46 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:
What happens when you set Line-In as the default? Is Audition still unable to use it then?

Hmm... I wondered about that but never tried it. I'll have to test that out tomorrow.

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

Sven Groot — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 20:11:10 GMT

What happens when you set Line-In as the default? Is Audition still unable to use it then?

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

dentaku — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:46:49 GMT

OK, after messing around a bit more I got Audition to record AND monitor the signal coming into the MIC jack (monitoring is always a bit complicated on a new installation of Audition) but Line-In just records static even though the meters move.
In Adobe Audition 2.0 you have to make sure Monitoring is set to Audition Mix instead of External if you want to hear what your recording.

Vista Sound Recorder records the signal from the MIC jack but I can't hear it while it's recording. Line-In does nothing.

I've come to the conclusion that Line-In just doesn't work in Vista yet and it probably has to do with the drivers being so unfinished.
Audition and Sound Recorder don't even know that the Line-In exists.

One good thing is that I can apply effects in real time and they seem react quickly. Maybe the latency is better in Vista.

Here's a screenshot. Notice that [01S] Microphone is the only input available, all the meters are moving (I could hear it too) and in the bottom right corner Monitoring: is set to Audition Mix.

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

dentaku — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 18:59:56 GMT

Yup, I found all of that. It's just not very useful. Then old Recording controls where much easier to use.

I just plugged a Creative Zen Micro into the Line-In of my computer while I was typing that first sentence and for some reason I can hear it through my speakers now but that LEVELS slider does absolutely nothing. The meters in Audition move but it just records quiet static.

The MIC jack picks up a signal if I plug in the wire half way and I can see the little meter moving but I hear nothing out my speakers.

I'm going to mess with this a bit more and try out Vista's sound recorder. It might have something to do with Audition.

Ion Todirel wrote:
how about this: Control Panel - Hardware and Sound - Sound - Manage audio devices?

also look at Speakers Properties (in Playback tab), for recording sounds you also can use Vista's built in tool accesible from Start - All Programs - Accesories - Sound Recorder.

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

mig — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:36:45 GMT

I have a SoundMAX as well and one of the things I don't like about the Vista audio stack is that they now search the hardware on board (or something similar according to Larry Osterman) to give the supported output channels. I have a 5.1 audio speaker setup that I have working on XP, but in Vista I can't output 5.1 channels, which renders those speakers useless. Back on topic, I consider the Vista audio stack immature if not incomplete.

Edit: In Vista's defense, it COULD be that my drivers aren't properly reporting the audio channels it supports (or XP was allowing 5.1 channel output through stereo which is fine by me and my speakers), but I also used the drivers that Windows Update served me for the sound card.

Re: Vista audio question: No input volume controls in Vista?

Ion Todirel — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 15:53:02 GMT

how about this: Control Panel - Hardware and Sound - Sound - Manage audio devices?

also look at Speakers Properties (in Playback tab), for recording sounds you also can use Vista's built in tool accesible from Start - All Programs - Accesories - Sound Recorder.