PC mic picking up sound even when muted.

[TheBitSmasherhj]

Hello,
I would consider myself somewhat PC savvy as I have successfully built and maintained by current rig, but this issue has left me completely confused.
I have an Astro A40 headset, and recently when in Skype calls my friends have been complaining of hearing what I'm hearing, be it music, and YouTube video etc, even when my Mic was muted. After disabling all other audio devices including Line In, "What U Hear" etc this issue still persisted after testing with recording tools, so I purchased a Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium in order ot try to solve this, yet this had no effect on the problem. After contacting Astro support and essentially receiving a whole new audio system the issue still persists. Yet on other PC's this issue does not occur, and when testing other headsets on my PC is still does occur. I tried re-flashing my BIOS and checking that there was no interference between cables, but as I eventually resorted to using the Astro Mixamp, EM interference isnt the cause. I am completely at a loss, and any input into how I would fix this issue would be hugely appreciated.

I also have a similar but unrelated issue since purchasing the sound card, as in order for the sound to work at all, I need to enable both SPDIF and Speaker in the Playback devices as disabling Speaker causes programs like iTunes and VLC to crash and not play any audio, whilst disabling SDPIF causes no Sound to play at all, as my Mixamp uses SPDIF as an input. I have to also select Speaker as my default device, now meaning that the software-based volume control is useless as even at mute the volume stays the same. Although this is trivial compared to my issue above


My specs:
4770k @ 4.7GHz
12Gb RAM
290x
MSI Mpower Max Z87
Creative SoundBlaster XFi Titanium
Win7 64-Bit

 

[denis280]

welcome to the forums,did you disable onboard audio from the bios

 

[Ketchup]

When you installed the new sound card, did you disable the built-in one? I have heard of boards having issues like this, but I don't "hear" of it very often at all. Also, when you installed the new sound card, did you run the headset straight to the card?

The second sounds like a software issue. You can try the creative site for driver updates, but they used to be notorious for not updating their software.

 

[TheBitSmasherhj]

When you installed the new sound card, did you disable the built-in one? I have heard of boards having issues like this, but I don't "hear" of it very often at all. Also, when you installed the new sound card, did you run the headset straight to the card?

The second sounds like a software issue. You can try the creative site for driver updates, but they used to be notorious for not updating their software.

I did disable the onboard audio, but the sound card was purchased in order to solve this, as I was having this problem with the onboard sound initially

 

[inachu]

I wonder if you have noise cancellation enabled. If you do then it also uses the mic.

So try disabling it and see how it goes.

 

[TheBitSmasherhj]

I wonder if you have noise cancellation enabled. If you do then it also uses the mic.

So try disabling it and see how it goes.

I've done that, I've also noticed that when using either my onboard or dedicated sound card, even with neither drivers installed, my output audio is still picked up by both Audacity and on Skype, leading me to believe it is a windows problem, or something to do with my motherboard.