OK, so here's an irritating problem...

A while back I bought an external sound card. I'm very happy with it by 
the way. But then I unplugged my microphone from my PC's built-in sound 
card and plugged it into the external one. I can't hear a damned thing.

"OK, so it needs a line input" I thought. So I went out and bought a 
microphone preamp. And you know what?

I still can't hear anything.

To be fair, without the preamp, if I amplify the digital signal all I 
get is noise. But with the amp, if you apply about 90 dB of 
amplification, you can very faintly detect any loud noises made directly 
in front of the mic.

Can anybody explain to me (A) why the mic is still too damned quiet, and 
(B) how to make it loud enough to be useable?

[Remember, if I plug it into my motherboard sound card and turn on the 
"boost mic" option, it works perfectly. But the outboard sound card has 
no such option.]

Just as a point of interest... I have a knackered old mic that I got for 

just fine. [Although it's still a little on the quiet side. And that mic 
never did have any treble response at all.] The mic I'm trying to use 
was sold as a PC microphone, and indeed if you plug it into any PC and 
turn on the mic boost option, it works just dandy. [And gives a vastly 
superior sound quality to my ancient mic.]

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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