Windows Audio Hidden issues

Question

This is going to be a bit long winded with examples so bear with me. I've reached out to both consumer windows support and tried reaching out through O365 and have exhausted those options so im hoping either someone here, or maybe an agent will see this and get me in touch with someone who can assist or give direction.

I work for an audio company that makes products for content creators and streamers. our products enumerate devices in Windows, and then you can assign apps to them so you can have complete audio control. Some of our users have been encountering weird issues with how windows is handling audio and I need to figure out what on the backend is causing it.

Below I will give some examples of the issues, and then what im looking for/think it is.

Example 1: Everytime the user reboots their computer, Windows mutes the headphone port on our microphone. unsure why. I know its not how our software communicates to our mic, as this user is the only person experiencing it. they have to go into recording device properties and unmute it everytime they restart. Obviously this is not ideal. It seems like window is caching a setting somewhere for that audio device.

Example 2: In our app, theres a mic slider, and you can select the windows device you want to use as your mic. It shows all the active recording devices in windows. with our mic specifically, we've seen it where a user can select the mic, but it wont show any metering in the app or output anywhere. The only way to fix this, is to go into playback devices, find the microphone, right click and go to Properties, then go to the enhancements tab, and tick disable all enhancements (NOTE: the users we have seen with this, do NOT have any enhancements enabled, which is why this is strange). Once disabled and rebooted the mic metering in our app is fine and sound is outputting fine.

Example 3: We've had a user come forward saying their Microphone is quiet, and in OBS it's quite low. the only way they could fix this, was to again, go into recording devices, right click on the microphone, go to properties, and click through the tabs until they hit enhancements. as soon as they click away from enhancements, the microphone starts outputting at the correct volume. Disabling enhancements doesn't fix this, they still need to do it everytime. Note we have checked the levels, and the levels on the mic are fine both in app and in windows. its not a volume setting issue, windows is interacting with the device in a way that it is changing the gain or volume of the mic and not reflecting it or doing it under the hood.

Wondering if anyone has experienced this kind of thing, and how you fixed it, or if there is someone at Microsoft or a team at Microsoft I could talk to about it.

Thanks in advance!

-Thomas

Answer 1

You may ask your question at https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/ too. Sorry, but this question is untypical for home users.

Answer 2

It's not necessarily related to our app, as the variety of issues stem outside of our app, to windows audio devices. but I'll cross post to see if I can get anymore info! Thanks!

Answer 3

Hi Thomas,

My name is Igor, it's a pleasure for me to help others and I'll do all my best to help you.

You are talking about your company software, so it is more effective to ask such questions at Q&A forum https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/quest...

It is oriented to programmers, admins and corporate users, and this forum - to home users so local experts may have no corresponding knowledge, sorry.