Line in mic wont work

Hi, i have got a problem with my sound. More specific it is the line in microphone that does not work. I am using the SigmaTel HighDef audio CODEC driver. The problem is that when the sigmatel driver is installed the, line in microphone won't work. Only the array microphone works, but this one is very noisy. I use skype a lot and it is very unpleasant for the people i talk with, when i use the array microphone.).

My computer has got space for 3 line in's, the first two is for headphones and the third is for a mic.
Though the computer is also compatible with 5.1 surround sound, and that works fine with my Z5500 Logitech.

I have tried different headsets and i have looked a lot on the internet for a solution. The only thing i have found out is that SigmaTel unfortunately is a bad driver and seems to have a lot of bugs.

If i use the standard windows driver for sound, the surround sound doesn't work, but the mic does work. I am of cause interested in making the SigmaTel driver work as it is the (Dell) recommended driver for my PC. When i plug in my mic the driver asks me what device it is that i have plugged in and i choose the microphone option, but it doesn't work.

So i have no idea what to do for my surround sound and my microphone to work.

I hope that someone is able to solve my problem.

Thanks a lot for looking up my thread

Christopher

Headphones are NOT Line-in, they are OUT.

Computers may have several Line-In jacks though, but the mic jack normally gets amplified while the other lines do not. Verify you are actually plugged into the right jack.

If you are using the latest driver and the right jack then I don't know what you hope to get here; I don't think anyone here can write you a new driver so I suspect you will need to choose between working mic & 5.1 sound until better drivers are written.

Hello all ~

To Cwoehlk~

I have heard of Sigmatel giving issues, drivers and such, (Creative, which I have and struggled with it for a few months is another one until I got a good tech at creative and walked me through the issue) unless you get the right software to "activate" the right jacks.

See if there is a "mixer software" available via Sigmatel (even if it's BETA software get the software), it DOESN'T have to run all the time, but somewhere in there SHOULD be an option to "activiate" the ports you need.

Once you do that, you DON'T NECESSARILY have to have the mixer software runing at all times(at least for me with a Creative card)as long as you have the ports "activated".

Just a thought.

To Trainable Man~

You are correct as far as when you said "computers may have several line in jacks".

My particualr creative card has, I Belive, 2 one for Mic in and another for midi in(like for a keyboard or some such) and if you dont get it correct , the other person ain't gonna hear anything when you are trying to talk to them. OR it comes thru wirth echos , if your lucky for it to come thoru at all.

Of course, if you have you "standalone" card AND an intergrated card then you have another issue , and you have to make sure you have things configred correctly in your BIOS AND in Device manager. And have to have things plugged into the right ports as well.

Good luck Cowehlk and a "thanks" to Trainable Man

I have the same issue with my Dell XPS M1530. I plug a microphone into the front jack (any of the 3) and 1) it does not disable the built-in mic and 2) it does not recognize the plugged in mic (actually a line-in cord). Yes, I've responded to the pop-up that shows the 3 jacks and specified "line-in".
I may have compunded my problem by recently upgrading to Windows 7 from Vista -- wow, I love the speed of Windows 7 by comparison! I loaded the latest driver that I could find.
Oh well. I'll have to see if I can find another way to record high quality sound, as my Dell doesn't seem to cut it.

Hi graeme.

I never made the three Jacks work although i started using windows' standard driver which works just fine. Now the left and the right Jack works. And my sorround is driven by HDMI cable which works fine for me. Also i downloaded the realtek hd driver.

graeme, I found one post that suggested they were able to disable the built-in mic on a Dell 1530 by replacing the sound drivers with ASIO4ALL drivers. Might be worth a shot to create a restore point and then try this driver.

Other than that, I'm afraid the manufacturer controls the drivers and how they function.