Low mic volume

Hi, all these tips are the basic things I’ve tried 20 times and they aren’t solving my issue. Also, there is no microphone boost in windows 11. The actual fix required me typing in a command or doing something in registry editor, or possibly a deep in the device manager files but in an unexpected place. I know I had to navigate to a windows file and go through many sub menus to enter or change something. I lost that fixed setting when I had to do a clean install of windows 11 because of issues with excel crashing every 30 seconds or less.

Hello, Annon_736

Welcome to Microsoft Community.

There are many reasons why the microphone volume is low, and you can try the following steps to troubleshoot the issue:

1. Increase the volume of your microphone. Here's how to do this in Windows 11:
2. Select Start > Settings > System > Sound.
3. In Input, select a microphone to see its properties.
4. In Input volume, make sure the blue bar adjusts as you speak into the microphone.
5. If it doesn't, go to Test your microphoneand Start test.****This will help you troubleshoot any issues with your microphone.
6. Run Windows Troubleshooter. Go to Windows Settings > System > Troubleshoot > Other Troubleshooters, find Recording Audio under Other, and click Run.
7. Change your microphone settings:

> Right click the Speaker icon on the right bottom of Windows desktop

> Select Sound Settings

> Click More Sound Settings under Advanced

> Click the Recording tab, find your microphone, right click on it and select Properties. Then select the Levels tab, and adjust the Microphone and Microphone Boost level. Or go to the Advanced tab, and uncheck the 2 options under Exclusive Mode. If necessary, also uncheck Enable audio enhancements.

4. Change your communication settings

> Right click the Speaker icon on the right bottom of Windows desktop

> Select Sound Settings

> Click More Sound Settings under Advanced

> Click the Communications tab, checkmark the Do nothing box

While these steps above are not definitely the final solutions, they will still be helpful to narrow down the issue, which are worth a try.

Feel free to let me know if you have other concerns.

Best regards

Yuhao Li

Microsoft Community Technical Support

Apologies, I didn't want to write out every single setting I've adjusted and since the list of tips you posted are pretty much the standard suggestions I have seen on every help page, I lumped that together as the "basic" suggestions. I can see what you're saying about the driver, but here's the thing: when I originally fixed this issue, I did not need to get a different driver and the microphone did work with windows 11. That makes me think that the driver is not the issue. I do have the most up to date driver for the microphone array but I'm not sure what you mean by installing the legacy version, or how I would do that.

A driver is an application that, like any other program, is constantly updated. So you can uninstall the current version first, install the old version and try again. The latest version is not necessarily the most compatible.

You didn't mention that you have tried these steps when you posted your problem. Also, you have already performed a clean reinstall of Windows, so this problem has little to do with registry, which is reset to default after a clean reinstallation of Windows.

If changing the Windows settings does not solve the problem, then the problem may have something to do with the driver. After all, you upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11, the driver available on Windows 10 to Windows 11 may have compatibility problems. Have you updated the driver, if the driver is not the latest version? Or the driver is indeed the latest version, install the legacy version and try again.