W. eWatson said:
I just decided to use an inexpensive new Sony microphone with my laptop
(subject). The connection is in front. I plugged it in and spoke. Zippo.
Perhaps it's for recording only. Is it possible to use the microphone to
produce sounds out the speaker, as flimsy as it might be?
It seems to me there's some sort of panel of devices that one must check
whether certain input/output audio ports are used.
You need
1) Sound driver
2) Un-mute the recording device in the sound software control panel.
Yours is Sigmatel (now owned by IDT?). Or use the built-in Windows
mixer to do it.
3) Use a suitable microphone.
4) Find a recording application. Under "Entertainment", WinXP
has "Sound Recorder".
With that you can make a basic recording, to prove your setup works.
Another tool you can download, is Audacity.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
I was actually able to record the microphone in Sound Recorder, then
press Play in Sound Recorder, to play back the audio, and by using
"Wave Input", could record what was being played with Audacity. So
having two record/playback applications allows you to play around
a bit.
For microphones, these are some example types.
1) Dynamic. Basically a coil of wire and a magnet. Produces a 3 millivolt
(i.e. low level) signal. Doesn't work that well with computers, as the
computer may not have enough gain to make a 1 volt signal from it.
2) Piezoelectric or ceramic. This has a higher amplitude than a dynamic.
The computer should have enough gain to work with that one.
3) Electret. The computer is designed with this type in mind. Of the
three pins on the microphone jack, Tip is the mono microphone input
signal, Ring is the bias contact, and Sleeve is ground. The bias contact
consists of a voltage source and a current limiting resistor. At one time,
it might have been 5V with a 2K ohm resistor. That powers a simple amplifier
on the electret microphone. Some recent audio chips, supply a somewhat
smaller voltage on the bias.
If the microphone input is stereo, then both Tip and Ring have bias
networks, and the microphone modulates the voltage level on the bias
contacts to produce stereo recorded signals.
The presence of the bias, is not supposed to upset other microphone types.
So one explanation, would be if you connected a dynamic mic, there isn't
enough gain to hear it.
One of the first HDAudio chips, made the mistake of forgetting
"microphone boost". In the AC'97 days, there was a hidden tick box
(half the fun was finding it), and it offered "20dB boost". That was
essential to a pleasant recording experience with AC'97.
HDAudio, may offer a large attenuation/amplification range, such that
you get a near equivalent of the "20dB boost". They probably don't bother
with a "boost" tick box, and instead, you get variable amplification
via a slider.
In the Audacity program, if you go to the inverted triangle symbol next
to the microphone icon, there is a "Start Monitoring" option. That allows
monitoring the microphone for input level. You can try adjusting things
in your mixer, until you see a good level in the Audacity monitor. For
example, using the monitor, I managed to figure out I plugged my microphone
into the wrong jack
The color of the orange and pink jacks on the
faceplate of my sound card, makes then hard to tell apart. Pink is the
one I was looking for.
HTH,
Paul
