Prevent microphone feedback through speakers

Jan 03, '05 09:22:00AM

Contributed by: ephramz

I was confused in the last few months when the microphone on both my desktop G4 and Pismo Powerbook started playing through the speakers, leading to screeching feedback if I turned the volume or mic level up too high. I often had to just select a different input in the Sound Preferences to turn this off and be able to pump up the volume. But then when I needed the mic for iChat, I had to go back and switch it again.

I remembered that earlier versions of OS X had a setting for playing the mic through the speakers, but I couldn't find this anymore. It turns out after some poking around on the Apple Discussions site, that this setting now lives in the Audio MIDI Setup app in the Utilities folder. Starting this up, there are three "Thru" checkboxes next to the microphone settings at the bottom in the Audio Devices pane. Even though none of these were checked, clicking the Master one for the mic on and off fixed the problem for me on both machines.

I'm not sure which app or system update might be accidentally turning this on, but it could be related to the installation of 10.3.4, Skype, iChatUSBCam or turning on Speech Recognition. If anyone else having this problem has a clue, please post a comment.

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