I was trying to figure out how to get audacity to record my speaker/soundcard inputs, and failed, but along the way i stumbled upon this feature in windows 7 (and probably vista).  Goto your volume options in control panel, or simply click on the little speaker in the taskbar at the bottom right, and then goto communications.

There should be some automatically chosen feature selected "When Windows detects communications activity" *"Reduce the volume of other sounds by 80%."

I selected *"Do nothing" instead :P

It's a problem that is super annoying so PLZ take 10 seconds to change this regardless of whether or not you think you suck.

 i have no idea what it does, what i do know is that a lot of people with windows 7, my brother and i think ur brother included, have mics that get INSANELY low when they get ingame, or INSANELY loud, i figure theres a million reasons this could be happening, this seems as though it may be one of those.

 BTW we needs to get rid of lots of those ridiculously stupid lol maps :P

BLAH BLAH BLAH OMFG :P are you two collaborating to write a book about this topic? are you two both 100% sure, given the intricate workings of the modern day computer, that such an option may or may not have an effect on audio drivers and or ventrillo and or battlefield ingame sound bullshit.  doubtful.

either way, i know one thing, when certain people start certain games they either get really low or really loud, and that seems quite unlikely to be on my end :P  granted this vent equalization thing you mention sounds like a good option 'for me', the problem itself has not originated 'from me'.  i merely happened upon an option that seemed to be selected automatically because windows is stupid.

slick get a new mic

Posted By GlobalReach on 08 Dec 2010 09:11 PM

 i have no idea what it does, what i do know is that a lot of people with windows 7, my brother and i think ur brother included, have mics that get INSANELY low when they get ingame, or INSANELY loud, i figure theres a million reasons this could be happening, this seems as though it may be one of those.

Has nothing to do with windows. Sometimes my mic is down in front of my mouth and other times I have it up near the top because I forget to lower it after Im done eating. It also depends on how high my volume is set. If its loud I might talk louder since I cant hear myself and at night I talk lower to not wake up people. It also depends if im pissed like Turismon mentioned. 

I have no sound lowering going on in any programs I use caused by windows.

 

everyone complained :P plus it went bad 8 months before i got a new one, but it kept on getting better, and then worse again, so i was holding about hope.  but wow, you guys, and stuff, wow

and for the record, there is a problem that bad company causes, and it causes peoples mics to lower quite a bit, my brother and i confirmed this, and then he fucked with audio settings for a while until it stopped.

 not sure what settings he messed with, tbh it might have just fixed itself as cheese messed with ingame settings, all we know is bc2 made cheese's mic about 10% of what it was without it, barely audible, unidus' game used to do the same thing, until it stopped magically too, unless uni fucked with anything

Well apparently it does work for some people I didn't have anything change when I tried it but apparently it can glitch out for some people when it shouldn't. Read this somewhere:

"It's a feature of Windows 7, when playing Team Fortress 2 Windows 7 lowers all other sounds in the background like Ventrilo, Windows Media Player, iTunes, etc. This shouldn't be happening as it's only intended for Phone Calls but on some systems it registers peoples voices within TF2 as a phone call and reduces the sound volume in the background to 20% of it's normal volume."

So apparently if you have VOIP enabled in some games Windows can glitch and lower it when it shouldn't be doing it at all. I tested it with vent and it doesn't do any difference but might as well just turn it off unless you use that setting. I guess it could happen for some people in BC2 if you have VOIP enabled.

Locking the topic since I don't want to have to delete fucking posts again but both sides of this thread had a valid point. It shouldn't have any affect but apparently some programs glitch it out.