[Ellegen]

Potato microphone and you.

Good time of the day ladies and gentlemen.

I want to share this little overview of the steps I took to make my microphone output in-game somehow more or less tolerable after running into multiple issues of having no voice at all.

Think of my setup as a NASA-grade PC on Windows 10 version 21H1 and USB Karaoke microphone because everything I describe below will be mostly applied to that. I am also using wifi router for internet connection, this is important for understanding Step 3.

Doing this mostly to attempt to compile information and save your time if you have any similar issues.

Disclaimer!

I hope you have enough common sense to at least revert any changes you do to your PC if you decide to follow anything I depict here.
Under no circumstances I will be responsible if your PC grows legs, steals your cat, and runs away if you try to follow any steps described here.
There is no guarantee that any changes you do to your PC following this will make any difference at all and instead- will only cause permanent irreversible damage.

Use at your own risk.

Step 1: Make sure your input is valid. 

This might be not necessary at all, but still, I recommend you to keep in mind that running through the basic steps of diagnosing sound-related issues never hurts anyone. That mostly means checking your devices and peripherals in an orderly manner:

• Ensure that the microphone and headset are properly plugged in. Some microphones might require two separate connections, one for the audio out and one for the microphone in.
• Use different jack or USB ports while testing.
• Make sure that your headset / microphone hardware is not set to MUTE.Adjusting Microphone volume by University of Oklahoma
• Under the Windows 10 Settings/Privacy/Microphone: Check the “Allow apps to access my microphone” if not checked already.
• If the headset / microphone have a volume control, make sure it is set to a adequate volume that makes it possible for the user to hear / speak.
• Exit all the other programs that might be using your microphone.
• Make sure that the latest drivers for you headphones and microphone are installed if they have independent drivers.
• Check your audio settings to make sure that the desired microphone and headset is selected and that they are not muted.
• Right-click on the speaker icon on the lower right of the menu bar.
• Select the recording tab.
• Check that the desired device is set as “Default Device”.
• Check that the capture indicator bar on the right moves as you speak. If it does not, please check if your microphone has a mute button or switch and make sure it is not on mute (third time, I know).
• If the speaking indicator bar still doesn’t move then, you might probably need a new one at this point.
• Do not select any devices such as “Stereo Mix” as a recording device for now. That will be done in Step 2 depending on the situation.
• Select the desired device and click on the “Properties” button.
• Click on the “Advanced” tab and make sure that the “Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device” option is unchecked. This is not vital but may cause problems in some cases.
• Set the sample rate to the highest possible. Usually, it is 16 bit, 44100Hz, or somewhere near that.
• Select the “Playback” tab on the Sound panel.
• Check that the desired device is set as “Default Device”.

You can then right-click the Default Device and select the Test.

Verify that you can hear sounds coming from the desired speakers or headphones.

That is the point after all.

Step 2: Bypassing the lack of independent audio drivers.

Our main goal here is to create a virtual audio device with its drivers to boost the microphone signal before outputting beyond Windows limitations. A buffer between the microphone and output device that will pre-amplify your signal.

For this purpose, I used Equalizer APO and Peace Equalizer, an interface for Equalizer APO since the first one does not have it.

I highly recommend you use this in-depth guide during the process of installing and linking your virtual audio device. In fact- this guide is most likely all you need to know about Step 2.

I have one important note, however.

If the pre-amplification slider seems to do nothing at all while you listen to output, I suggest you reinstall APO drivers for your input device in the configurator using Troubleshooting options with SFX/EFX option checked.

Step 3: SIP MY LEG LMAO.

Routers segments your ISP and your internal network through a process known as Network Address Translation (NAT).

An ALG (Application Layer Gateway) acts as a proxy to rewrite the destination addresses in data packets for improved connectivity.

The problem with SIP ALG is the packet rewriting aspect of it. SIP ALG can be useful to mitigate multiple NATs, but it doesn’t help the vast majority since it modifies the destination addresses of VoIP packets possibly causing reliability issues. HLL uses Vivox VoIP.

You can check if your router has SIP ALG enabled using this simple online HTML 5 test. Click start test and then navigate to the summary tab.

You can then use this in-depth guide to learn more about SIP ALG and how to disable it in various routers or simply navigate to your router settings and disable it if needed.
After disabling it- the test results must all look green like this:

Step 4: Tampering with game files.

If you somehow screwed the game settings or have a bug like me where you physically cannot re-enable VoIP in-game you might want to delete: \Steam\steamapps\common\Hell Let Loose\HLL\Plugins\VivoxCore
And then verify and re-download game files in Steam.

Doing the same to HLL game setting itself located at:  %LOCALAPPDATA% \HLL\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor might also help, keep in mind, you will need to configure all settings once more after the game restarts.

 

<hr />

 

That is all the steps I’ve been through in my masochistic attempts to make my lame microphone sound better.

Should have just bought a new one perhaps but well, I am already here.

Hope this helps anyone.

Sincerely yours, Vadim.

 

[Powerbits]

Nice post, thanks

[sciscitatio]

Nice and informatic post about the subject!

Would like to add one thing i have noticed on several occasions. Some players talking over squad chat has a very low mic compared to what they had if you were talking to them on discord. As it was in my case, as well as others I have asked to check, the “Microphone Volume” under audio settings was at 50% by default. I confused this with being other peoples microphone volume, but after getting some complaints I pumped it to max and found out it was the input volume on your own mic. Might be worth double checking if anyone is getting complaints about a low mic 🙂

[Anonymous]

Awsome and thorough writeup!

 

 

[Real01]

Thanx m8! Discovered this way an error in my config and adjusted this straight away. Most helpfull!

[Mediocre]

Thanx for the pre-amp explanation, helped a lot!

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