First Ring Daily 1106: Open Mic Night

Posted on August 23, 2021 by Brad Sams in First Ring Daily, Podcasts with 18 Comments

On this episode of First Ring Daily, the mic is open and broken, phones got lost, and Halo drops a few features.

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Comments (18)

18 responses to “First Ring Daily 1106: Open Mic Night”

  1. wright_is

    USB controller?

    2 months ago
    0

  2. greenberry woods

    The USB microphone problem may be a USB port grounding issue. I use a USB hub, that's properly grounded and things like garbled microphone, doesn't happen. I had similar issues when using an improperly grounded USB hub, on a desktop.

    2 months ago
    1

  3. Paul Thurrott

    I'm starting to think that this may just be a power issue. That if the mic would somehow accept external power that would do it. But I don't understand why no Amazon reviewers, most of whom must use this with a laptop, did not have this issue.

    2 months ago
    0

    • darkgrayknight

      If you have a powered usb hub or docking station and plug the microphone in through that, does that work?

      2 months ago
      0

    • lukec

      Because it's mostly Apple people:


      From Apple Insider:

      "The USB-C ports on the MacBook Pro models also deliver 10 watts (5.2V x 2.1A, below 2100mA when adding Extra Operating Current to the Required Current) to any directly connected iOS device, so you can charge your iPhone quickly that way as well."

      From some HP forum post I found:

      "Find the usb root hub in device manager and select properties and the power tab. It will tell you the max power allocated to usb ports. Mine is 500 mA. And if I tried to measure it with a meter it would likely be lower due to resistance of the device and cable so 330 mA is about right. There is no way to alter the power allocation. "

      2 months ago
      0

      • lukec

        I have no evidence for what I'm about to say, but that's not going stop me from writing it :-). If you have a PC laptop with discrete graphics or a PC laptop where another model in the exact same line has discrete graphics, the USB ports, when plugged in, will have enough juice for the mic.

        2 months ago
        0

  4. lukec

    Good microphones need power. Your Heil has some sort of interface box that feeds it juice. Laptops generally don't feed enough power over USB for a microphone. That's why you'll never get a fast-charge for your cell phone off your laptop. A powered USB hub should fix your problem. It means you have to plug two things in which stinks.

    2 months ago
    0

    • lukec

      By the way, a good USB device should send low-power warnings to the OS. It's part of the standard, but, if I had to guess, you have a team that is really good at microphones. They have one version of their microphone they'd really like to adapt for the Podcast market who don't want to buy an XLR interface box. So they buy an off-the-shelf PCB from a vendor that knows how to do USB, but they never tell or don't know to tell the vendor to change the software on the ROM. So the software on the ROM is like, "I have enough power for me and this Infineon chip (or whatever), so we're good". But the software on the ROM isn't aware that it also has to drive some 200 mW diaphragm.

      2 months ago
      0

  5. djncanada

    get a Plantronics!!

    2 months ago
    0

  6. ronmcmahon

    Clearly Paul has enabled the little-known 'Witness Protection-Voice Modification' setting for his microphone, which everyone knows has never worked properly on desktop PCs.

    2 months ago
    4

  7. sykeward

    Does the microphone you use on your desktop for this show work any differently on the HP laptops? Maybe some weird interaction with the USB chipset in the actual microphone you were trying to use

    2 months ago
    0

  8. Michael_Miller

    Maybe consider a career change because your day job seems irritating.

    2 months ago
    0

  9. madthinus

    Curious question, did you plug it into the usb port for higher power?

    2 months ago
    0

  10. anderb

    Boot the laptop with a linux live cd/usb. If the mike exhibits the same behaviour under linux then it's a hardware issue. If it does not, it's a software issue.

    2 months ago
    0

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