Let’s face it. We all know that SL’s voice isn’t totally stable, but there are a few things you can do to clear up a bad connection on the fly or make a dead mike work.
Dead mike – If your SL client is not recognizing your microphone (most common reason for a dead mike), go into (on viewer 2) ME – PREFERENCES – SOUND AND MEDIA TAB – INPUT DEVICES TAB then select your microphone. It should say something similar to (Microphone (Logitech Voicemaster USB) as one of the selections. Usually the selection labeled “default” is not the one you want. Only try it as a last resort.
If this doesn’t work, on windows 7, go into START – CONTROL PANEL – DEVICES AND PRINTERS then look in there and you should see your microphone. If not, make sure you have drivers installed for it. Right click to make it your default device, then close. Restart SL and it should pick up the mike in the previously mentioned input devices tab.
If neither of these work, it may be that your mike is simply damaged (They do break very easily) or not compatible – in this case, replace the mike with another, preferably newer model.
IF YOUR MIKE IS BEING DETECTED BUT DOESN’T WORK, make sure that the SL voice client is enabled. You can easily tell by looking at yourself and seeing if avatars have a white dot. If they don’t, voice is down. Look at the top of your screen in the location bar – if you see a sound symbol with a red hash over it, the sim owner has deliberately turned voice off. If voice is available, the simplest thing to do is to relog SL and see if the Vivox server catches it and starts up voice for you. If this doesn’t work after a couple tries, hit cntrl-alt-delete and then show all processes button. Manually kill the Vivox client which is called SLvoice.exe, then restart SL. It should force the Vivox server to notice you and send a new handshake signal, thus re-enabling SL voice.
Skype —
This is actually quite similar to troubleshooting SL. You get to this setting by using EDIT – TOOLS – OPTIONS and there you will see your hardware settings. Just make sure that your input and output are on the desired device(s) and you should be good to go. The no-go situations from SL also apply here. Damaged mikes wont work any better on Skype than they do on SL
GLOBAL –
In all cases, use USB hardware. Analog headsets may or may not work, and should only be used by advanced users that know how to configure sound card daughterboards (Some people seem to think analog sounds better, but I’ve only known them to be a boatload of hassle when said people can’t get them to work when they need them). USB does all that work for you the moment you plug the device in.
Written by: HydraShaftoe