Reducing the sensitivity of my Mic??

lettuce · 2 Oct 2014 at 18:31

I have a Sennheiser PC7 USB headset mic but have been not that it seems to pick up loads of back ground noise, from the creek of my PC chain to me pressing the buttons on my game pad!.

I know in the Recording device menu in windows 8 you can alter the 'Level' of the mic but doesnt this just alter the volume of the mic and not how sensitive it is??

Marsman · 2 Oct 2014 at 19:31

I don't think you can adjust the sensitivity, only the microphone level can be adjusted. Sensitivity and volume adjustment should be one and the same I would have thought, at least from a software point of view.

Does not lowering the volume result in the microphone not picking less background noises?

lettuce · 2 Oct 2014 at 19:43

It does but then the volume of my voice is also lower

Marsman · 2 Oct 2014 at 23:26

What you are looking for is probably more noise cancellation than sensitivity. If the microphone is less sensitive, it will be less sensitive to all noise, close and further away.

Looking at the specs, Sennheiser states that the microphone is noise cancelling. It would seem that it doesn't work that well. I imagine how effective noise cancellation is varies from microphone to microphone, and probably depends on the cost of it.

Realtek onboard audio has noise cancellation effects, but these only apply to an analogue microphone. How effective they actually are I have no idea. Maybe there is software that has similar noise reduction effects that can be used with whatever microphone is being used.

lettuce · 4 Oct 2014 at 20:32

Yeah, i think this mic might be fault, as its seems like its 'open' all the time and the noise cancelling isnt kicking in. There doesnt appear to be any software for this mic either