How to Listen to the microphone?
When you launch an application on your PC, a video, a mp3, or Karaboss Karaoke player, the sound is transmitted to the speakers.
Unfortunately, the sound of the microphone, remains inaudible …
And a Karaoke without any microphone…
Indeed, by default, Windows does not automatically output the audio through the computer’s speakers.
This is on purpose.
Why ?
It is not to complicate your life, but simply to prevent the microphone, capturing the crystalline sound of your voice, but also that of the speakers, does not create an infernal loop of amplification, which ends with a shrill sound, the effect Larsen.
The sound emitted by the speakers is picked up by the microphone which transmits it amplified to the speakers. This signal is again picked up by the microphone and re-amplified, and so on.
So avoid this on a laptop where the speakers and the built-in microphone are very close, but it is quite possible when using an external microphone and not directed to the speakers.
The solution ?
- Right-click the speaker icon in the notification area.
- Choose the “Recording Devices” menu, and the window below is displayed.
- Select the “Registration” tab.
- Select the active microphone (make it active if necessary) and click on the “Properties” button.
The following window is displayed:
Check the box “Listen to this device”
And now you listen the sound of the microphone in your speakers.
Unfortunately, this manipulation, excessively simple, does not always provide the expected result.
Latency
You listen your microphone in the speakers, but the sound is offset by a fraction of a second. And in the case of Karaoke, it’s just unusable.
On recent versions of Windows, the activity “resident” (everything that runs in the background) is important (services, applications, anti-virus etc …) and sound management is not managed on a high priority.
I was able to successfully test one of the methods recommended by gurus sites: the installation of ASIO drivers.
I did not go so far as to install specific drivers for my motherboard, but the generic ASIO4ALL drivers available here.
After installation, the result was rather correct, but maybe it’s due to my configuration, and it will not work everywhere.
To go further in optimization for management of sound:
https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/209571729