I want to increase GAIN on 3rd Party Webcam

Greetings,

I bought a popular but cheap webcam direct from China. It shows up in Amazons with a 1000 different names and prices.



The cam part is pretty good. The mics? Muddy. I can live with that but I find the gain is too low. I've been trying various approaches (Equalizer APO and various Realtek settings) and I believe the Windows 10 PC doesn't 'get' that I'm trying to access the mic in the camera.

Let me back up. I'm not saying the mic doesn't work in OBS or even Windows CAMERA app. It does. But when I dial down into Windows 10 settings -- I think those are designed for mics. Not mics in webcams.

Has anyone else been down such a road?

If I open SOUND SETTINGS I see this --



If I select SOUND SETTINGS I get this for input



These are my choices --



The system has a way of doing a TEST where I read a sentence and I can tell it can't hear me.

Webcams have their own audio chip with their own audio drivers.

If webcam manufacturers don't supply you with a separate audio driver, then it will use some generic audio driver written by Microsoft.

The webcam audio signal never enters the realtek audio chip, so nothing you can do with realtek audio drivers will have anything to do with your webcam audio signal.

Thank you Sandy. That certainly explained why I kept hitting a wall.

I've investigated and found you were right -- a Microsoft driver is in play.



That corresponds with my install dates.



I tried updating the 14 year old driver and it's staying at that version. Hmm.

Dead end? Something else I can try?

Thanks