So this new webcam looks fine, but getting the built-in microphone to work properly is turning into Mission Really Impossible. It works, but the volume is so incredibly low it would have to be inserted in your larynx to get anything audible out of it. And we just can’t find any way to turn the volume up to a reasonable level.
And chatting with Shushu yesterday, we couldn’t get a video call going properly. The video was getting through just fine, but all I could hear from his end was random noise. I’m sure he heard nothing from my end. But then again, the internet here has been rather unreliable over the last week or so.
Mum and Dad bought an identical webcam with the same built-in microphone, though, so this could turn out to be very frustrating indeed. I have all the sound control thingies for everything in this computer that may, perhaps, make a sound all turned up to maximum, and still the microphone is absurdly quiet.
I’ve had the same problem chatting live online to my parents. They could hear me, apparently, but I couldn’t hear them. Might be a bandwidth issue. But even for them to hear me, I had to turn up the volume quite high.
No, it’s not bandwidth, we were just testing the thing, not actually trying to chat. Skype’s test call didn’t work, and MSN Live Messenger’s audio/video setup couldn’t get enough volume out of the mic, not even when we held it right up to our mouths. We just plain can’t get the volume high enough. I’m thinking it might be best to just buy a separate mic, but I’ve yet to run that idea past the wife. Something tells me she won’t agree….
You may need a separate mic. The built in mic on your average computer isn’t really sensitive enough. I have headphones with a mic which seem to be all right – so long as you keep the volume up.
That’s what I suspect, although I should make it clear the mic is built in to the webcam, not the computer. Even so, it’s clearly not sensitive enough, and I’m tempted to run down the local supermarket and see what I can pick up cheaply.