Recording issues with headset microphone

Cheers,

Firstly, I have no idea where to ask help in my issue, so I am sending this troubleshoot all over the internet, pretty much.

Thing is, I’d like to do a Let’s play (of sorts), you know, to record myself playing a game while at the same time giving comments. Easy enough.

I am using USB-plugged HyperX Cloud 2 headset for recording and listening. As for the actual video capture program, I tried Nvidia GeForce’s ShadowPlay, and it worked like a charm. At first.

Right, here is my problem: couple of months ago I recorded some test footage and it came out very nice, microphone picked my voice clearly, I could hear the game sounds while I played and video was of good quality. Then yesterday I tried to do my first “serious” video. ShadowPlay did record the video and even picked the game sounds, but not my voice while I commented.

Now, I have tried pretty much every possible fiddling there is, updating drivers, reinstalling devices etc. I have no other microphones attached to my computer. I have stereo speakers (which I either turn off or disable to ensure there are no conflicts) and a Yamaha mixer (which I have disconnected long time ago). After a while, I found out if I check “Listen to this Device” option in the microphone options, HyperX not only lets me hear sounds from the computer but also allows ShadowPlay record my voice – the downside is that I must listen to my own voice echoing on the background, which royally messes up all the recording I am trying to accomplish.

Other than that, I also have the option to turn on my speakers, let the “Listen to this Device” blast its echoes there, and now, I can record in peace – except for the fact that now I must awkwardly wrap the headphones around my neck to get the mic in front of my mouth and use speakers to hear the game sounds. This is a problem of sorts, since I really would like to use headset as it is meant to be used!

For the record (pun intended), I connected HyperX to my wife’s computer, turned her ShadowPlay on and – it works perfectly! I can record ShadowPlay footage on her computer wearing my headset and giving comments with no audio or recording problems whatsoever! She has an older computer than me, but other than that, I have no idea what makes the difference here. Also, it seems her Win10 changes sound sources automatically, like when turning of her speakers it changes to HyperX (if connected), unlike mine where I must manually select the correct device every time, and sometimes even disable my speakers if I want to use my headset. Well, this isn't my real problem, but I thought mentioning it anyway.

Please give any wild guesses you people have, I am so frustrated with this situation. Tell if you need any technical details of my computer.

Thank you!

Hello to both of you,

and thank for your answers. Unfortunately, they did not help me here. Basically, I have already done the things you suggested, and the problem stays the same, no matter if HyperX is the default device, default communications device and default recording device. ShadowPlay doesn't even suggest me any other devices by default, only HyperX (and push-to-talk is not on). In addition, GeForce Experience itself offers very limited options in its settings, so it's not helping here either.

One interesting thing though: when I use "Listen to this Device" with its most irritating echo, it doesn't matter what source I have selected in ShadowPlay (in this case, I had "Realtek HD audio line-in"), it still records my voice. So, it only records my voice with "Listen to this Device" selected, no matter what. I just don't understand this. There must be some options I have screwed up in there, but I just can't figure out what. Also, when I tried to record my voice in Audacity with HyperX, it never found the source. Again, something's wrong in my settings, but I seriously don't know what and where.

More to the point, recording from HyperX succeeds ONLY if using "Listen to this Device" - I just reinstalled Audacity, and it won't record an audio track without that option selected.

Open the sound applet, click the "Recording" tab, double-click the microphone, click "Advanced" and see if "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device" is checked. If so, uncheck it and click "OK".

Ben

Hi and thank you for your answer,

Unfortunately, it's been unchecked all this time. I've pretty much tried out all the options in all the tabs, sub-folders and whatnot.

Again, I have to stress that I cannot do any recording with any microphone (I tried this with my cheap Gembird) without having that darn "Listen to this Device" box checked. I'm starting to lose all hope, I'm just so confused. This really, really does not make any sense. Everything worked just fine a couple of months ago, and all the sudden everything seems to fall apart. Weird.

On a side note, I updated Realtek with latest drivers from Win10 catalogue site, and at least I got my Audio Manager back. Doesn't help here, though.

I'm beating a dead horse here, but whatever:

After plugging in my stand-alone microphone (3.5mm jack plug), I tried recording in Audacity. The program does not find my microphone, even though it's connected correctly and Realtek Audio Manager recognizes it. Windows 10 on the other hand doesn't automatically find it, I have to manually enable it from the device list, and even then it does not pick up the sound without "Listen to this Device", further more, it has to be set to speakers.

In any case, to record in Audacity I have to
a) use Listen to this Device to my speakers
b) have THE SPEAKERS (!) selected as recording device (!!) in Audacity
c) have the speakers selected as playback source (obviously)

This is the most backwards system if I've ever seen one. Is my sound card busted? Some random conflict between programs? I mean, at this point I'm starting to be confident it's my hardware or Windows 10 causing this problem.

I'll leave it here for a while and see if you guys can come up with some explanations. If not, I will as a last result make a video of this whole ordeal, show you guys all the audio options and programs and everything.

Oh joy, I finally got it to work! It seems my Privacy settings had to something with it. I went and changed a whole bunch of things there, I do not know which one made the magic happen, but at least for now it looks like my recording issues are over. Heck, I can only blame myself for this one, should've checked those settings in the first place.

Thank you users essenbe, Access Denied and Ben Myers for trying to help me. I really appreciate it! I'm going to mark this one solved. Phew.

-grels