Condenser Microphone sounds really bad/choppy

[ceelmstream]

Apparently my mic sounds really choppy and static-y, even though when I have listen turned on from windows settings I can hear myself sounding fine. From the words of another player, it sounds like my mic is literally frying in a frying pan, and another player reported they knew someone with the same issue when using a "Stand alone mic". I use an AT-2020 USB+ and I suspect the extra noise is a compression artifact with high quality microphones and the VOIP, but as someone with no technical knowledge I can only speculate.

edit: I can hear a lot of static pops when using the in-game listen to my mic setting, but it sounds a exponentially worse when I hear it played back from other players

second edit: Thanks for the replies! I checked my settings in windows and my recording device is set to 2 channel 24 bit, 44.1 kHz. Switching it to 16 bit seems to have fixed it

third edit: okay it helps but sometimes I still get games where no one can understand me. Help!

 

[jokleinn]

Try setting your sample rate to 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz, and play with the buffer size in the audio settings. I have a Focusrite Scarlett Solo that has done this in all sorts of games and applications for me if I forget that I had the sample rate up at 192 kHz to record a voiceover.

While it is something that could be looked into and fixed and so it is a good thing that you're pointing it out, buffer underruns with microphones like what you are describing can be really tricky to chase down and sometimes are even hardware specific. I would recommend trying the workaround that works on my machine (tm) and seeing if it helps at all.

 

[mehmood]

Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 here, and I've faced this issue with multiple apps -- not knowing how to handle too much data. Set it lower and it should work just fine -- but indeed a long term issue if unsupported. I'd second for a support on this!

 

[multiplaja]

I have AT-2020USB-XP microphone and I have the same issue. Game build 5,216. Players heard me like i'm talking 1cm away from the microphone. Very choppy and absurdly loud.

I played a bit with the audio settings in game and it looks like the option Voice Chat Volume (Other Players) also influences volume level of my microphone as well (at least when I use it with "Listen to My Mic" option enabled) - so this may be the issue. I had it to set to 100% so you can try to lower this value as a workaround.