what is Mic monitoring?
Mic monitoring is a feature that allows you to hear your own voice with a help of a headset. Headphones have a microphone attached to them. This feature allows the gamers to communicate with each other while playing games.
When people play video games, they generally don’t realize how loud they are speaking. Gamers specifically tend to shout and shriek in excitement or speak louder than usual since they cannot hear themselves properly when they have their ears covered by headphones. This can make the people who listen to the player very comfortable and, in worst cases, might even damage their eardrums.
Since this feature allows users to listen to themselves speaking on their headphones it leads to a more pleasant and enjoyable experience even for all the people who are present in the game and people in their close quarters.
Along with this, it also allows troubleshooting to become more straightforward as a problem because the user could hear themselves and, as a result, detect issues with their microphone if there were any.
ENABLING MIC MONITORING
It is not that mic monitoring was released recently; it always existed as a feature but remained lesser-known. Mic monitoring is not usually enabled by default on computers. As a result, it has left users confused about how it can be activated. Also, there is no one way to do the same as activation steps will vary from platform to platform.
Mic monitoring is called ‘sidetone.’ Here, it is enabled by default, but the volume can be altered. Steps to do the same are as follows:
This process is little different.
CONDENSER MICROPHONES
A condenser microphone is a recording device. It uses a capacitor or a condenser to make a sound, making up its name. This is more apt for people who specifically make music recordings and are into singing.
The capacitors present work by converting acoustic energy into electrical energy signals that electronics can pick up. The condenser parts usually have two plates, which are considered as the diaphragm in the mic. The diaphragm is overly sensitive to sound waves around it. Based on the diaphragm, they are of 2 types:
Mic monitoring is an excellent way to test the quality of the sound that is recorded. At times we might end up with a recording with has sounds of a muffled microphone. Some recordings have background noise in them. But here, since one hears their voice, one will be aware of the quality of the sound we have throughout the time of recording.
A microphone might stop working when calling, working, or gaming, and we wouldn’t know. There can be many reasons for this, like software or even hardware problems with the microphone. Mic monitoring might help us find the faulty part when we attempt to fix the headphone’s microphone. This also saves a lot of time.
When you use mic monitoring, you are aware of the noise that you are making. Because when you wear headphones, you might have to speak very loudly for another person to hear from you. It may be because the other person also cannot listen to themselves and start shouting. With mic monitoring in the game, every headphone activity like a meeting or gaming becomes calmer and more enjoyable.
If the mic monitoring is very loud in your ears, the chances are that your microphone will again pick up the sound. This won’t be a problem in those headphones designed to cancel the microphone sound at the time of recording. Otherwise, this might become a problem when you are recording because there will be a consistent low echo in the background.
Since the whole purpose of mic monitoring is to hear ourselves, we will keep hearing everything we say. Some people may eventually get used to it, but it isn’t very pleasant to repeatedly hear everything we say. It can take time for people to get adjusted to that.
Mic monitoring was created in the first place to deal with the problem that people cannot hear themselves when they talk and tend to talk louder and unpleasantly, and this could be resolved if they could only hear themselves. People talking so loudly would render other people uncomfortable who were on the other end of the microphone.
Conclusion
To sum up, mic monitoring has some great uses. We can hear our voice in our headphones, helps us to keep a check on how loudly we are speaking. Also, it helps adjust our voice accordingly and avoid confusion and creates a pleasant and enjoyable experience for all the people who are playing a game and even those who are just in the surroundings.
It is because of the popularity of gaming that most headphones have mic monitoring to make effortless adjustments as required by the user.
