How-to prevent Windows from turning off your Microphone, without your consent.
Episode #9-03 released on September 2, 2018
For a while now, Microsoft, combined with Windows 10 updates that we all love to hate, but love to have to keep our online lives secure, has been causing a lot of headaches. And, the sheer number of tweaks has been steadily complicating the experience of users online using such things as microphones.
But, why I am talking about microphones?
Well, if you have watched the last 5 or so episodes, you would definitely see my show go from using a Blue Snowball, to a webcam microphone and back again. The quality of the webcam microphone is horrible, it is actually worse than the episode sounds like, but because I do tweak my own audio, I fixed it as much as possible. But, it isn't the same kind of microphone. The issue had to do with recording with my Blue Snowball Microphone and Windows 10.
Now, what will happen if you search for a solution for a problem related to microphones and Windows 10?
Well, the majority of people automatically presume a privacy setting has been activated leading to your microphone not working. While, this is possible, it is doubtful that it is the only problem.
The other solutions are related to the way Windows treats devices by basically needing the microphone to be the default recording device, supposedly, and just to point out an issue there, it isn't something necessarily true if your application can, also, select which recording device you want to use.
The what is the issue? It is a power saver issue. Look up the control panel, go to hardware and sound, then power options, select change plan settings, then change advanced power settings, and finally, under USB settings, disable USB selective suspend setting. Disabling that will prevent Windows from disabling devices whenever it wants, like a significant other unplugging your game console in the middle of a multiplayer match.
Oh, and that setting is why my microphone wasn't work! Thank you, Microsoft, for yet another ridiculous setting that doesn't work properly. And for your information, this setting does periodically reset back to enabled, so keep an eye on it.
Host : Steve Smith | Music : | Editor : Steve Smith | Producer : Zed Axis Dot Net