Microphone/Headset feedback

I've had this problem with multiple headsets--basically, the microphone picks up sounds from the headset. If the sound is loud enough to be picked up by the microphone(which is as far away as it can extend--it's built into the headset), it transmits as feedback--the louder the sound, the more painful the feedback. I'm convinced this is a problem with my onboard sound(either the quality of the hardware isn't good enough or the software is improperly configured). I'm using Realtek HD Audio drivers, up to date. As far as I can tell, i've only had this problem since I installed Windows 7.


There's also a consistent hiss sound when the microphone is transmitting(I test in Ventrilo by using two instances of myself, both transmitting and receiving the same sounds), though i've minimized it using the equalizer utility. This happens whether or not the microphone is plugged into the headset(it's detachable).

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

After talking with a friend, he recommended I try vent normalization(ventrilo is the only program I use where I get this reverberation) using the compressor feature and changing specific gains. This limits what my inbound volume can be--even if someone is shouting. This fixed my problem. Not only that, but I was also able to use any volume---even complete maximum volume--and get 0 reverberation/static when others speak(so even though the sound is louder than before, because of the normalization there's no reverb).

The setting that worked for me was:
Gain 5
Attack .01
Release 498
Threshold -30
Ratio 100
Pre Delay 4

Figured I'd post this if someone else ran into this problem.

Ventrilo:
http://www.ventrilo.com/download.php

Edited by garmanma, 15 March 2010 - 10:37 PM.

Figured I'd post this if someone else ran into this problem.

Thank you for doing that
I believe this will benefit enough people that this topic should be pinned

Edited by garmanma, 15 March 2010 - 10:33 PM.

This was happening to me on my logitechs z 2300 speakers. I thought the speakers were faulty. What I did was disable or set my microphone to zero and voila. No more feedback. What happened with mine was that when I used vent or listen to music at loud volume, my subwoofer would start humming really loudly and it'd just overwhelm everything. And when i touched my laptop or typed, I'd hear the punches in my subwoofer. Its kinda cool actually.

thanks orcheon, this really helps..