Tyro said:
On my HP 6730s notebook, right clicking the sound icon in the notification
area brings up a menu. Selecting recording devices brings up the sound
window with the recording tab selected. Selecting the microphone and right
clicking and then selecting disable, disables both the internal and external
microphones. It seems to me that plugging in an external microphone should
disconnect the internal microphone, however, on my computer that does not
seem to be the case.
The audio playback is not affected when you disable the recording device. My
response was directed to "johnstiscali" who wished to just listen through
headphones without audio input from the microphone.
You are correct that disabling the recording device will disable the
microphone (internal or external) input. You are disabling the audio input
through the sound card whether it is the internal one or an external
microphone.
Every computer I know of (mostly notebooks) will disable the built in
microphone when an external microphone is inserted in the microphone input.
By any chance to you have a Line In input you are using? If this were the
case, you would not disable the internal microphone which uses Mic In input.
One solution is to use a USB sound pod. These are sound cards that connect
through the USB port and show up as a USB audio device in the recording
devices section. We personally like the Andrea USB-SA sound pod which is the
size of a USB thumb drive. The only caution for this device is to use the
built in USB audio drivers in Vista (or XP) and not load the software that is
supplied by the manufacturer. See this device at:
http://www.mymsspeech.com/microphones/prod_details.asp?prodID=230
Marty Markoe - eMicrophones, Inc.
