People on voice chat can hear audio my PC is playing

[Heinz57]

Hi, I'm using an analogue (2 jack) headset through the onboard Realtek sound card on Windows 10.

A couple of days ago it was pointed out to me on discord that everyone could clearly hear the game/music/video I was playing. Apparently this had not been the case beforehand but it's continuing to do it.

If I mute the mic with the inline control, they can still hear it! If I unplug the mic from the PC they cannot.

This is happening with discord and team speak and the windows sound control panel is showing the mic picking something up too.

I've tried two different (analogue) headsets and the same thing happens. I've tried both the case front audio ports and the rear ones thinking the front ones might be poorly shielded or something, but it's made no difference either.

Windows is set to record through the mic and output to the headset and I've tried almost every option (and suggestion on Google) in the windows sound settings and the Realtek Audio console (noise cancellation, disabling stereo upmix etc) but nothing has made any difference.

I have no idea what has changed for this to suddenly happen. There was a windows update that day, but no driver updates and no hardware changes in that time.

Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated, I'm completely out of ideas and it's rather annoying!

 

[EsaT]

Have you disabled other devices than mic in Recording tab of Windows sound settings?
(in case Windows somehow records also from tohers)
Always best to disable unneeded sound devices to leave Windows less chances for screwing up.

Signal could be also leaking in badly design integrated sound card circuitry.
But then problem would have been there always, instead of just appearing one day.
Which means it's very likely software related.

So removing that latest update would be other thing to try.
Never trust updates from Microsoft doing only what they're supposed to do.
We're now alpha testers with Microsoft pushing updates out with "If it runs at all it's OK, we'll fix problems later" mentality.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...shipping-windows-updates-its-developing-them/

 

[Heinz57]

Which means it's very likely software related.

Thanks, seems you were right (fingers crossed). Switched on Acoustic Echo Cancellation which had previously always been disabled in the microphone settings, restarted PC, and it seems to have stopped the noise leakage. Very odd that I never needed it before, but now I do, so something much have changed. Should AEC have been enabled the whole time?