Problem with mic volume Dimension E521

Thanks very much for the quick reply on this.

 

I bought the E521 for my home office hoping to save money on phone calls buy using skype and voipstunt. Now I've paid for credits on both and can' even use the bloody things because of this (again) wonderfull service from DELL.

 

Dave

Low mic volume has been an issue with Dell's for as long as I've been on the forum (approx 5 years).  At one point a Dell moderator said a codec was missing but I've never seen what the codec was.  I don't know if it's ever really been resolved.  Do a search on this section for the problem and you will find a lot of posts. 

 

Sorry I can't help.

Which mic port are you using the front or the Back?  I'm using the front mic port and in order to use it for my Ventrilo client I first had to disable the rear mic port then that allowed the front mic port to actually work.  I'm using Vista and I just went into sound settings in the control panel and then did a properties on the rear mic port and set it to disable.

 

If you're using XP I wouldn't know offhand how to do this.  I hope this is your problem becuase I know it frustrated me for some time.

 

Codec could belong to any of the software tools you are using.  Your windows media player uses a codec.  Your Skype program uses a codec.  Ventrilo has it's codec that it uses.

 

*copied from Wikipedia*

An audio codec is a computer program that compresses/decompress digital audio data according to the given audio file format or streaming audio format. Most codecs are implemented as librares which interface to one or more multimedia players, such as XMMS, Winamp or Windows Media Palyer.

* end of copy

 

So he could be hinting that your Skype program may be having a codec issue or missing something.  I know when I've downloaded some movies that were compressed using Divx I had to install the Divx codec in order to properly play them.

I know in the old days after installing the latest and greatest DirectX drivers that sometimes it would cause issues with a sound card and I would have to reinstall the sound driver.  I know you said you've done that part already but I'm just putting out some information for ya.

 

 

Thanks very much for your answer. I'm actually using XP pro. I am using the front mic (rear disabled) tried it the other way round too, didn't help.... Both ports do actually work (just, with volume to full with mic boost)

Regards

Dave

Does anyone know anything about the CODEC that fireberd refers to in the initial answer to to this thread (maybe someone from DELL that is looking in) it may be helpfull!!!!

Is there someone from Dell watching this forum that can help... I really need to have this facility........... Able to use my mic for skype, and other voip programs....HELP!!!!!

Thanks to everyone that tried to help me. I've gone out and wasted some more money and got myself a sound card (sound blaster type) problem solved.

I think I'll go back to building my own PC's

 

Dave