Headset/boom mike stopped working

[Citadelgrad87]

I have a speaker and headset on my PC that used to work fine.

IT's an HP labeled 3 speaker setup, a tiny sub and 2 tinier speakers, they are plugged in the wall and a usb port on the back of the computer.

There is also a volume switch/headset jack that I plug into that mutes the speaker and lets me talk and hear using teamspeak.

The volume control consists of a wire that terminates in a male plug. My recall is that the male plug went into a Y adapter, and the two resulting, color coded male plugs went into the headset and speaker jacks on the back of the computer case. I think this came with the speakers, but I am not sure.

The headset is a no name $15 set.

AS I said, it used to work fine. Now I can get sound in through the speakers, or the headphones if plugged in, but the mic seems dead.

If I pull the Y adapter, and plug the male from the power switch directly into the mic port, the mic shows live and levels show on teamspeak setup, but no sound in the headphones.

I am thinking either the Y is bad, and I am not sure how that would happen, or the males are plugged in incorrectly. I think that's unlikely, because the pink one has a mic picture on it, and the pink port on the back is the one that lets the mic work.

Anyone have a similar setup?

[Merc1138]

Check to see if the mic got muted in windows? That would prevent you from hearing yourself(mic playback mute is separate from the recording mute). The other thing would be to check with a sound recording app(windows 7 still has one built in), make noises into the mic while recording and then play it back.

[Citadelgrad87]

Its unfortunately windows 8, which I fully hate.

It shows the mic as recognized, and if I take out the adapter, it show the mic is working.

I could not find a separate mute ofr windows, only a sort of 3 way level for playback that are all linked, when i right click the speaker icon.

When I use the windows method of setting up a mic, it just doesn't show any sound coming in.

[Merc1138]

Hmm, not a clue then. If TS is still showing some sort of input from the mic(the level changing), that means it has to be getting something from the mic. Even static other noise that would cause that but a non functioning mic would still be audible.

Since you're using windows 8(you should consider upgrading to 7 ), I don't have anything handy to look at(I have an 8.1 VM but the stupid live account isn't cooperating right now) to tell you where to click to find what you need. Audacity is a free app you can download from sourceforge, but I'm not familiar enough with it off the top of my head to tell you where to go in it to record mic audio quickly.

Try it on another computer maybe?

[stilly]

yeah try on a different computer, but I have seen a lot of cheap adapters fail too, like, they just fail and those little triple/double contacts fail to line up or come loose inside and get jacked up (no pun intended, well, okay, maybe a little).

I have issues where USB extension cables for some reason will not allow me to plug in my usb external HD, but when I plug the HD directly into the port it works fine... Of course I am speaking of windows xp, but maybe it is time to swap some parts out.

I have a headset/mic setup but I plug the mic directly into the pink and the speakers/phones into the green. No splitters used because when you start splitting cheap things up you sometimes have issues that are not worth troubleshooting vs getting a different setup. :\

[LittleOldLady]

Try another, headset, if you have one, I am constantly breaking them. BTW I have used Teamspeak, I like Ventrillo better...