OBS Studio Mic working at last, but a question

Anticleon

Member
For weeks I was wondering why my laptop won't recognize the external mic. I did everything found in big forums and yet no luck. And then I got a clue from a YT video of 30 seconds who said it's with the Realtek control panel. Did what she recommended still with no luck but the solution was around there. At some point as I was meddling with the Realtek CP it changed to HD Audio. And now my headset mic is accepted, and that's all I wanted. :)
Anyway, can anyone please tell me what happened here? What was wrong with Realtek, and what's HD audio's difference?
 
Welcome to the unpredictable nature of USB mics. Most kind off mess things up by fooling the computer that they're a sound card type device. HD audio and the Realtek are just different device driver types, so follow the usual OS premise of try the first and if it doesn't work, try a different one. This is one of the reasons USB mics are just a pain. They're often fine once working. Getting there is much more tricky. Things like input gain are often very differently handled in different drivers. If it works - small and move on.
 
Actually what I plugged in were just the headset and a 3.5mm mic. Both are working although the 3.5mm cheap mic is a waste of 8 dollars lol. Headset mic is far better. As the USB mic wasn't working I gave it to a friend last week thinking that I have to wait until I'm able to buy a new laptop, lol.
As you say USB and 3.5 are both highly unpredictable now I understand. I was thinking that buying a plug and play mic solves everything but that's just a lie.
 
About 5 years ago I got sent a really nice microphone from one of my Chinese suppliers. A USB mic. On my Mac it showed it was a fine performer. however, it also should have had a reverse function where you could plug headphones into it for monitoring. Macs typically use fairly good 'no driver needed' installs - they just seem to work, but it couldn't cope with sending audio back. On windows, I never got clean audio out of it no matter what drivers I found and tried. generic ones all failed, and even the manufacturer gave up. So I got a free mic that probably sounds good and does look rather 'posh'. I doubt there's anything wrong with it really - just the interface being useless.
 
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