Microphone Recording Levels are Unusably Low. Why?

Question

I just installed Rosetta Stone, and they have chosen to use Flash Player for their online portion. This means the microphone and audio are processed through Flash. Unfortunately Flash has decided that my microphone should transmit at a whisper even if I yell into it. On the computer itself, on Discrod, on Skype, etc the volume is perfect and everyone can hear me fine. It records and plays the same volume and fidelity as it would if it were a good analog tape recorder sitting on my deck. And yet no matter what I try, Flash makes it barely pick up what I say - if at all. I've tried right clicking, going to settings, and raising Record Volume to max - it doesn't help. Reduce Echo is also toggled off. It has permission to use my microphone. Despite all this, if I scream into it at the top of my lungs it transmits as though I were gently whispering into it. And before anyone asks, yes it is a high quality analog mic, and no there is no built in mic it might be picking up by accident - I only have one option for input.

I'm super frustrated and need this fix. Does anyone have any advice or trouble shooting aid that can fix this without messing up literally everything else on my computer that uses my mic and picks things up fine?

jeromiec83223024 · Accepted Answer

It is 64 bit Firefox. I tried telling Microsoft to stop giving exclusive sound control to applications, turned off hardware acceleration, and then adjusted the vol to max in Firefox. It worked.. so long as the flash settings window was open and only if I clicked the volume slider even if it just stayed in place. Tried on Microsoft Edge and the results were fairly similar, only the change lasted so long as I didn't close the browser, not just the settings screen. So it is not that Firefox specific I don't think. It is something with the way flash is storing or saving info or something. I'd really like a fix, even if I have to edit the registry or something. Thanks.

Okay, so this is the crux of the problem:

It worked.. so long as the flash settings window was open and only if I clicked the volume slider even if it just stayed in place.

Those settings are supposed to stick. They're stored in a file called settings.sol, which usally lives in \Users\<you>\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys\settings.sol.

If you're unable to read or write to that file, that would explain why the settings aren't sticking. You might just delete it and see what happens. Flash Player should recreate it at next launch, but all your settings would revert to default. At that point, hopefully your settings start to stick.

You might also want to run chkdsk to ensure that the disk isn't corrupted. It seems weird that this would happen unless there's some underlying thing going on with the filesystem.

jeromiec83223024 · Answer

To give you any useful advice, I'm going to need to know more about your computer and browser:https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1195540

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