I, Istarius

Last week, I bought a new mic, after my old one had gone broken. I’m not using it for anything serious, just for voice communication when playing games. So I needed something small and cheap I could clip on to the headphones cord.

Funny thing is, it worked like a charm (figuratively) first evening. No problems at all. Next day, however, something had happened. I hadn’t rebooted the computer or changed any settings from what I remembered, but something had happened. The mic still picked up my voice when I spoke, but more faintly than before and there was a constant humming noise not there the day before.

The next few days got weirder. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. It had nothing to do with settings, and it seemed very strange that the mic would already be broken. Then one day, I noticed something peculiar. The noise level seemed to be different depending on where the microphone was located in the room! Finally, I found that placing the mic on top of the computer, the noise was virtually none.

What did I learn from this? Turn off noise suppression. When the mic had sat all night on top of the computer case it had adjusted to the noise from the fans and HDDs; after I picked it up the mic tried to suppress noise that was no longer present.