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MS Teams Microphone Issue-Resolved




Covid/Corona is around since a year now and most of us are attending meetings online almost daily. Although some platforms like zoom has become instant success, but others like Webex, MS Teams and Google also got the chance to do decent business. People are appreciating the easiness and user friendliness of zoom, but paying for the service is still not very popular among common mass. With these limitations, and also restrictions from the employer to use one platform, most of us are stuck with one system eventually, although we started with all and got trained in more or less each of them. There is no harm in using one system, but you do faces technical glitches using them. One of the common issue is the mic and speaker problem. I have personally experienced that mic somehow doesn’t work properly in one or two of these platforms. It’s not that the mic has gone bad, but it doesn’t work optimally or equally with all the applications. So, it is embarrassing when you need to speak up in a meeting and others are not able to hear you. There are many solutions provided by different internet users to solve this issue:

One is to change the settings to increase the microphone input level. Then many users use two devices parallelly like computer/laptop and mobile handset, where the mobile is used for microphone and speaker. Echo problem is common here if you keep the audio system on at both places. In this arrangement, the headphones/earphones are generally preferred, as microphones give clear sound with noise cancellation, which can occur system/handset mic is used. Now, the problem of this practice is – using earphones for many hours a day is not a healthy option.

So, do have any other way to solve this. People suggest to buy an external microphone. However, the products available in the market are either poor, or pricey, or are more suitable for mobile handsets, as making videos is common activity these days. Most of these mics are not usb mic but the one with 3.5mm jack connection. In laptop, you only have one 3.5 jack for both mic and speaker. So, you can’t use it, if you do want to do so, you need to buy a sound card splitter. Again, the products available in market are either bad or expensive. So, how to do this without spending more money.

There is one solution, which I personally felt the best because i) I don’t have to wear an earphone for long time ii) I don’t have to use two devices, I can work on only desktop/laptop iii) I don’t have to spent more money on these extra accessories, which may or may not work, and iv) I can use those ones which are commonly available at home.

So, here is the arrangement you need to do:

-Take a speaker which has aux-in facility and plug it into your 3.5 mm jack of computer. It can be a Bluetooth speaker, or small computer speakers. We know that both are common products available at home.

-Bluetooth earphone, which is again commonly available at home. Remember, noise cancellation is important when you need to speak up, and earphones are one of the simplest system which can give very good noise cancellation.

-Now, the system settings should be: Go to the settings>Devices. Turn on the Bluetooth and pair your Bluetooth earphones.







-Once it is paired, now you need to set the sound settings. Go to settings>system>Sound>advanced sound options.







-Now you will see all the apps which is linked with the usage of your sound system. I recommend to set the master settings (instead of individual apps), which is the topmost option in the list (screenshot given above). Select the output as default, it will work with your speaker connected in 3.5mm jack. Select input as the Bluetooth headphones (name will vary as per the brand of your headphone). And voila! we have done it. You can speak from your headphones and you should see the bars of microphone moving. If it is moving, then things are fine. But, if it is not, then check whether your headphone mic is working properly. Sometimes, the Bluetooth earphones do give issues with mic without any issues in the speaker, so one may not realize that the mic have gone bad. You can also open your meeting app and check the device settings and see if the input and output are properly selected. You can even directly do these changes here.

Hopefully, these steps will help many users to attend their meetings without any microphone issues.

 


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