Microphone delay when recording in Windows 7

Anonymous
2009-10-28T14:53:55+00:00

Since upgrading from Vista to Win7, my microphone input has a delay of 500ms to 1s when recording.  This is most notable in apps like Ventrilo.  Anyone else having this problem?

Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

HTOmega Claro+ sound card

E6600 Intel CPU

6 gigs of RAM

Nvidia GTX 280 video card

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Music, photos, and video

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Anonymous
2010-03-25T22:37:38+00:00

Hi Everyone,

Please see my earlier replies. No functionality has been removed in Windows 7. If you have an audio driver and codec that exposes the hardware loopback, it will still be present on the Levels tab of the Speakers device. However, not all drivers expose this. If you had this option on XP and load the same audio driver, it should be exposed on Windows 7. Same with the stereo mixer. If the audio driver exposes it, it will be available. It is hidden by default on Vista/Windows 7. But on the Recording tab if you right click in the open area and select show disabled devices, you can enable it. If a Stereo Mix device is not shown, then the audio driver is not exposing one. If you had this option on XP, then please try installing the same driver version that was previously installed.

Thanks,

Chris

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-07-28T22:56:26+00:00

    I can't find anything on here that helps me remove the lag for my equipment. I am actually going to give up. MS you win. I don't want to be a singer song writer anymore. I'm going to play on my X-box instead.

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-07-29T07:10:50+00:00

    http://i.imgur.com/8wLU2.jpg - Before you uninstall drivers or blame hardware, make sure to try this. This solved the problem I'd been having for weeks and it comes down to making sure the PLAYBACK for your mic / line in is not muted from the PLAYBACK tab. DO NOT go into recording and check "Listen to this device," which should be MUTED.

    If you go select "LISTEN TO THIS DEVICE" your playback will be slightly delayed by about 200ms.

    From the PLAYBACK tab in Sounds, right click on SPEAKERS, go into the LEVELS tab and unmute Microphone. It should now play back in real time.

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-07-30T21:14:08+00:00

    http://i.imgur.com/8wLU2.jpg - Before you uninstall drivers or blame hardware, make sure to try this. This solved the problem I'd been having for weeks and it comes down to making sure the PLAYBACK for your mic / line in is not muted from the PLAYBACK tab. DO NOT go into recording and check "Listen to this device," which should be MUTED.

    If you go select "LISTEN TO THIS DEVICE" your playback will be slightly delayed by about 200ms.

    From the PLAYBACK tab in Sounds, right click on SPEAKERS, go into the LEVELS tab and unmute Microphone. It should now play back in real time.

    What if you want to hear yourself when singing or while playing an electric guitar ? un-checking listen to this device is not the solution, because you will not able to hear yourself.

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  4. Anonymous
    2012-08-07T22:18:35+00:00

    Checking that 'listen to this device' box is fine as long as you sing without accompaniment from the laptop/pc as that gets fed through the mic too.

    I banged my head against brick walls for ages over this. There's lots of people with the same problem but little hard and fast information on a fix. This is going to be no different I guess but may help a few.

    Many people are saying that the problem is Microsoft. This seems to be true in my case. Having tried driver re-installation and all the other potential good advice buried in this forum I was browsing my C drive and came across the fix there. I have  a Lenovo laptop. This might be specific to that brand.

    Under C:\SWTOOLS\DRIVERS\AUDIOC there is a readme.txt. It states this:L

     'On Windows Vista and Windows 7 the Microsoft audio function driver

    installs by default.'

     i.e. a piece of software in place of the firmware you would expect from a standard driver. Many people have indicated this. Software is inherently slower  than firmware. I'm assuming here that sound drivers get loaded onto the sound card hardware and interface with the operating system.

    The readme goes on to explain that it is best to remove existing drivers before installing new. The replacement drivers were all part of the package.

    Interestingly it also seems that many embedded (i.e like in a laptop with no separate sound card) sound chip manufacturing companies, and I'm guessing, but graphics too perhaps, are prevented by Microsoft from making drivers for their hardware available in this situation. Which if correct, truly stinks.

    I have also unchecked the 'listen to this device' box and changed the advanced settings to match the recording software I'm using. Pushed the volume slider to maximum and added a touch of boost.

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