Mic Quality changes after a while in some apps
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#340 Mic Quality changes after a while in some apps
Hi, I'm currently having an issue where the effects of the equalizer apo changes to something muffled or bad after a while compared when you are monitoring it on windows listen feature(when it became muffled it's still very good on monitoring, but terrible in discord) . This occurs on discord and steam mic, Any ideas?
I've seen a similar issue on this forum. I don't know if it was resolved.
Do you use any VST plugins in Equalizer APO for your mic? And having a high pre amplication?
Ahh I see it seems like I'm not the only one. Yes I do use a VST plug in specifically ATX expander, RNNOISE, BASIQ and SWEET DRUMS. That's about it, I would really appreciate it this was resolved since it's hard to check once in a while if my mic is broken in discord since it's inconsistent when will it happen.
The only solution I found is just to unplug and plug back in the microphone to go back to the actual quality we can hear in the monitoring(not the muffled one after a while).
And what happens after removing these VST plugins and using something simple like a small pre amp? Btw. Do you use a large pre amp by any chance? This can be a problem including VST plugins which can also make the gain (think volume) of your mic too high. Windows has a mic (bad!) mic compressor build-in. When it engages by a high gain probably making the sound muffled. I'm not sure of this but it could happen since many of use want to increase the volume (which is actually the gain) of our mics. I don't know why this only would happen in Discord and Steam.
Anyway, at least you have some solution although not ideal.
After removing the vst plug in it's still sound like lowered volume compared to the original. I don't use pre amps on equalizer apo, since it already sounds fine and loud. I forgot to mention my mic as well it's a condenser mic Boya by pm500.
At least it isn't the VST plugins and as you're saying that the volume is lowered it shouldn't be the build-in Windows compressor. I don't know what else you could do. Perhaps trying the other 2 available APO techniques in the "Install as" dropdown list of the troubleshooting options for your mic. I'm guessing that you know how to access these options in the Device Selector. Note that after changing such options you need to click the "Ok" button to invoke the changed ones.
After hours of troubleshooting, I finally found the problem. While I was troubleshooting the audio, I noticed that it sounded muffled or robotic. At first, I thought it was audiodg.exe in the process, but even after dealing with that, there was still no fix. I was going crazy at that point when I suddenly discovered that mono audio was disabled for my headphones in Windows(At this point, I didn't even know why. it's not even mic related😭). I tried enabling it, and suddenly boom it fixed the issue.
That's amazing. Good thing you were so persistent. Where is this setting located?
I apologize for the late response. Our semester has just begun, which caused the delay.
I discovered that my microphone has two channels and was set to stereo. I attempted to convert it to mono by linking the left and right channels equally using Equalizer APO. This solution temporarily resolved the issue.
After linking the left channel to the right, the robotic or muffled sound was removed. It appears that using stereo with my current setup was causing the audio distortion.
Last edit: Mark Carlos 2026-01-22
Thanks for sharing this info, Mark. I've noted this on my list of Equalizer APO related issues.