Not being able to monitor mic input would be something the hardware drivers &/or how it was setup would be responsible for. Shouldn't require any special apps, though I'd think you might have to add an output amp to boost the jack output on your laptop. At any rate, audio output normally is always there, you can set volume of course & mute, & on the mixer panel you can set the source (not recording input) levels & mute. Recording properties usually has the basic 20 db mic boost option, level controls, & you still can usually only select 1 recording input. Depending on who made the audio chip, & the std used, if it's so-called HD std you should be able to also assign jacks to input/output etc. The HD std also has the option to disable rear jacks when the front jacks are used -- how that would work on your LT I have no idea. Depending on how you're receiving the vid input from your cams it's quite possible you're tying up the Windows resources you want to use with/for your headphone.

System Internals has a bunch of freeware utilities available for D/L at Microsoft.com, & perhaps one of their monitoring apps could show you if audio resources were tied up with your video input? Could try an USB mic or headset, bypassing some of Vista's audio handling, plus your drivers -- If you try USB, keep an eye out for HDMI audio (if you have it as part of the graphics hardware) -- if USB audio didn't work I'd try disabling HDMI Audio1st in Device Mgr.

Laptop audio is a particular pet peeve of mine. Okay, it just down right (insert colourful string of expletives here) me off.

I've had, or used, Dell, Acer, Hypersonic, iMac, and my most recent Toshiba. The Toshiba running Vista Home Premium 64 is actually pretty decent - which I should actually restate: it sucks LESS than the others.

Laptops are nice and portable and a dream come true compared to what we were using in even in the 80's and early 90's. That said, I have yet to find a machine with all the specs AND the ability to handle audio to my (or anyone's) satisfaction. My solution: buy something like a MOTU Ultra-Lite, or a M-Audio Fast-Track Pro, or some piece of outboard USB/Firewire gear that will actually do what you want without the fussing. The M-Audio is around $250 or so, and the newest Ultralite (Mk III, I think) are in teh $600 range, but worth every penny. The audio is excellent, you can route any number of ways with software, and just generally avoid any of the problems you're dealing with.

I've done some really weird setups with the Ultralite (think capturing Skype video and audio as live audio with a loopback system when a satellite linkup wasn't in the budget). Anyway, there are good pieces of outboard gear out there - pick one. Even a bad one is going to be better than wrestling with the illogical and frustrating setups you could TRY to get to work on your laptop.

Just my two bits.

All good points. Here's more info:

1. I had no cameras connected when I went hunting for the audio output but, since the camera feeds are over firewire and I don't monitor the camera audio on the LT, it wouldn't matter if they were.

2. I have a headphone distribution amp connected to the jack, so level is taken care of. There's no problem with output except that it's muted by the system when the microphone is enabled. That's why I'm looking for a software solution, I'll look at System Internals, thanks for the tip.

In the meantime, I'll have to stick to using the smallest mixer I have to boost the microphone to a level the DA can use. It's another piece of equipment to lug on location and I was hoping to avoid that. Maybe I can find a small mic preamp board that I can slip inside the DA case and power it off the DA PS. That would certainly solve the problem.

System Internals has no such utility that I ever heard of; in fact, they are system cli utilities, not peripherals. Don't know where the pp got that idea . . .

Really, I think something as simple as the Mobile Pre USB would do the trick. USB-powered, so little additional setup.

Works find on my laptop. I opened up the audio control panel, went to Playback / Options, made sure microphone was selected, and turned off the mute on the microphone. As i type, the clicking of my keypresses are being picked up by the mic and amplified out through the speakers.

It's almost like i've emulated an old IBM "clickety-click" keyboard! (Oh man, those things were awful to type on!)

Kelly, what's the OS? Laptop make? Rest assured that that was the first thing I tried on the Toshiba Satellite running Vista Home Premium. It was the logical thing - only nothing I tried worked. The only difference I can see is that I had an external mic plugged in and you appear to be using the built-in (webcam?) mic. I'll have to try that when I get home.

Windows XP Home SP2 on an acer Aspire 5004.

Doesn't matter whether i use the onboard mic or one plugged into the jack. It works either way.

Today's an officially brain-dead day, so don't expect much critical thinking from me. However, i seem to recall one of the complaints about Vista is that it disables various audio functions by default. I also seem to recall that most of these can be turned back on in some settings screen somewhere.

Sorry i can't be more help. I don't have any Vista installations around handy. I only know a couple people personally who use it, and they're all far away.

Doesn't work on my Vista laptop (Sony Vaio VGN).
I remember I could get feedback on my XP desktop with the SBLive by clicking "What You Hear." My M-Audio USB device has main and monitor outputs that will send the mic input.

That's about all the help I can give since I don't have ASIO installed on my laptop so can't test.

if this is what I'm thinking. MS disabled, some of the loop back functions built in the windows XP & older to "stop piracy". Now it's 100% up to the drivers as to what's done with the audio. My wife's Acer with Vista Home does everything no problem. My dad's Sony Viao is useless when it comes to audio.

@baysidebas
Could it be as simple as your mic won't work with that laptop?

"since the camera feeds are over firewire and I don't monitor the camera audio on the LT, it wouldn't matter if they were."

Not sure what's actually involved when you're monitoring vid, though if it's a prob with that stuff not running than you're right, it's probably irrelevant -- reason I brought it up... When you're playing your vid feeds, the software can automatically latch onto audio processes making them unavailable for anything else, the same way you can't record multiple tracks using a single soundcard/chip, i.e. that signal pathway is already taken. Software can automatically build a filter graph & hang onto resources whether there's actually any input or not.

"There's no problem with output except that it's muted by the system when the microphone is enabled. "

Do you actually see it muted in the controls, or is there simply no output you can detect? If it shows muted, you might get around it through the settings, or even changing your default output, depending on hardware. You could also check the Vista Speech stuff that automatically tries to take over any mic inputs, & uninstall or turn off whatever services/processes. And you could (after a backup) strip out the drivers that came with the laptop & try the generics from the chip maker.

If it just doesn't work, but everything indicates it should [your output jack is listed as the default in Vista etc] then FWIW I'd check the mic input for recording to hdd, make sure that's working by playing back the wav file. If everything's OK, I'd check the output jack, & if that's OK, go after setting's/drivers.

"I'll have to stick to using the smallest mixer I have to boost the microphone to a level the DA can use"

They make *Very* small headphone amps for portable players -- would that boost it enough?

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@musicvid
"System Internals has no such utility that I ever heard of; in fact, they are system cli utilities"

They include process monitors -- you can also find one or two at nirsoft -- & by looking at the processes you can see what resources, filters etc. are being actually used by whatever app/process. Been there, done that, & dxing a prob they can really help. On the downside, you can easily waste a bit of time trying to track down filenames to see what's what.

--------------------------------

@Chienworks
"I opened up the audio control panel, went to Playback / Options, made sure microphone was selected, and turned off the mute on the microphone"

That's what happens pretty much universally, only you have to go to Recording / Options to select the mic if it isn't already -- that's where you also turn on the mic boost if it's there, & set input levels. In Vista the Windows mixer panel is harder to find, but on every system I've played with it's still there.

"However, i seem to recall one of the complaints about Vista is that it disables various audio functions by default."

AFAIK the biggest problem was audio hardware folks were used to writing kernal mode drivers, & Vista ended that -- years of work had to be redone from scratch. Right now HDMI audio is often part of the graphics chipsets, & as that's based partly on pretty old & unpopular Microsoft code (I think same stuff USB audio uses), & it throws some folks a fit now & then. The default volume controls can cut volume unpredictably, & with some software you get a 2nd volume control in tandem with that for the system. In the Audio control in Control Panel, you have to make the desired device the default to turn it on sometimes, & you have to drill down into the properties to get the old style mixer panels. Mic's are kind of bad because Vista assumes you want to use voice recognition, & it's easy to get into the wrong setting's dialog, which BTW can cut input levels drastically. Several cheap mics we had laying around don't seem to work with Vista, but I've never used them or inputted direct myself so I can't say whether that's a big prob or bad mics. Also had problems once with audio hardware set to 24 bit as default, which killed most everything audio -- the hardware could handle it but not Vista?

" I also seem to recall that most of these can be turned back on in some settings screen somewhere."

Only special screens I'm aware of is the std mixing panels, which are like I said harder to find. If you're using a Realtek audio chip they have a special control app with almost hidden settings (poor design rather than intentionally hidden IMHO) that assign the jacks to whatever function, turn them off, that sort of thing. Realtek has new software out about 1/mo, & like Creative are finally starting to get stuff right in Vista & 7.
------------------------

@TheHappyFriar
"if this is what I'm thinking. MS disabled, some of the loop back functions built in the windows XP & older to "stop piracy". Now it's 100% up to the drivers as to what's done with the audio"

It is up to the drivers, but as far as disabling output with a mic plugged in, I can't imagine the gamers putting up with it, not too mention all the skype & Gizmo users. I know there are DRM issues outputting some HD, particularly BD, but I would hope that basic mono output would be too basic to screw with.

Could it be as simple as your mic won't work with that laptop?

I only wish then the fix would be simple. I can record the mic just fine, just not monitor the signal.

or is there simply no output you can detect?

just no output. Jacks work perfectly well independent of each other.

They make *Very* small headphone amps for portable players -- would that boost it enough?

probably not as they just boost "line" level to drive a headphone..

"They include process monitors -- you can also find one or two at nirsoft -- & by looking at the processes you can see what resources, filters etc. are being actually used by whatever app/process. Been there, done that, & dxing a prob they can really help. On the downside, you can easily waste a bit of time trying to track down filenames to see what's what."

Total nonsense.

"Total nonsense"

While something about a grass mud horse comes to mind ;?P it would be arguably more useful to point anyone interested to:
http://www.nirsoft.net/
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx

Both have quite a few apps/utilities that can be quite useful when it comes to the day to day business of getting & keeping our PCs & networks running. Both sites are quite popular, respected, & widely used, as is their software.

Where they directly relate to Vegas &/or media handling in Windows, you can think of process monitors as versions of Task Mgr. on steroids. If hardware or software isn't working or doesn't work properly, you can ignore it, Google for suggestions, or take a peek under the hood. Process monitors give you that peek.

Well, this grass mud horse would like to know:

Which one of Russinovich's utilities will give the OP the information he needs to find and turn on his headphone amp with a mic connected in Vista? Exactly what CLI switches should he use in order to get at that information?

Perhaps posting a screen shot of the actual type of information he needs and how you got it and how he would interpret it would be more useful than touting its general qualities, since many of us have used these utilities for years, long before M.R. was bought out by Microsoft, and already know what they will do.

I just wanted to mention that if you are using the built in audio on a laptop, there is a low latency ASIO driver at asio4all.com that is really wonderful.

"Which one of Russinovich's utilities will give the OP the information he needs to find and turn on his headphone amp with a mic connected in Vista?"

A couple of separate questions there I think -- I'll try to answer in a way that might be useful for folks troubleshooting this sort of tech problem. I'm far from expert, but I've been able to fix a few problems here & there over the past 15 years or so I've been putting PCs together...

1) I think the first question -- forgive me if I've miss-understood, is what's causing the problem of no mic output at the jack.

I have no clue why the mic input isn't available at the output jack. I know added software's not needed -- it works the way baysidebas wants on desktops running, XP, 2003, Vista, & 7 [no Windows laptops here, sorry]. From what baysidebas has posted, assuming playback & recording mix don't have the mic muted, & volume levels are OK, I'd suggest next either try different drivers or an USB mic/headset, but that's me, & it's not my LT & it's not sitting here for me to tinker with. ;-)

2) ""Which one of Russinovich's utilities will give the OP the information he needs"

Actually I had mentioned the process monitors in case monitoring the 3 cams was tying up audio resources, which in this case was moot -- baysidebas wrote that the mic wouldn't work with the video monitoring stuff off.

When video capping or display is going on, the software in use can possibly tie up resources needed to route mic input to output. When an app or process is running, it can use/need several different code libraries & applications -- simple ol' Windows' Notepad shows 23 entries in Process Explorer. viewing this sort of info for running video software can tell you if audio-related files are also being used. Much video playback software assumes an audio signal might be present, might automatically build a filter graph (the chain of DS filters necessary for playback), & might take sole charge of the audio pipeline.

If I were tinkering with the LT to find out what's causing no output with the mic plugged in, personally I'd use Autoruns to find out just what drivers were called when Windows fired up. This would tell me if more than one driver set was installed, which files made up the core audio drivers, if driver files were called but missing, indirectly which file versions were used, if any software started with Windows that might conflict, & might point out a conflict if an audio control panel applet was called but not displayed. Device Mgr. can give you some of that, but versions number displays in device properties aren't always in my experience accurate.

Process Explorer would let me see what's running in Windows, & what resources they were using, as above, so I'd check that. If I couldn't find anything else, after trying drivers & the USB input, I'd resort to saving & parsing the log file from Process Monitor, after ending what extraneous processes I could, like the mouse & keyboard software... This log shows almost everything going on (unfortunately it's usually Huge), including attempted file & registry reads/writes. It's how I isolated a problem with cineform when Vista was in Beta. Depending on what I found, I might or might not use other software tools.

3)"Exactly what CLI switches should he use in order to get at that information?"

Actually none... While the command line doesn't bother me, it's a bit arcane in Windows & used more for batch programs & ft ends than anything else. I think SysInternals still has one or two CLI (Command Line Interface) apps out there, but to tell the truth, I've no idea which ones without going through the folder one by one. I certainly can't remember using any.

Finally,
"posting a screen shot of the actual type of information he needs and how you got it and how he would interpret it would be more useful than touting its general qualities",

I'd be more than happy to post whatever I could that baysidebas feels would be helpful. I have no idea what audio chip the LT uses, what brand/model the LT is, & from the last post, it wasn't going to be pursued further, so I truly have no idea what pictures I could post that would be helpful. The pages hosting Autoruns, Process Monitor, & Process Explorer all show screenshots & have full examples.

With sincere apologies if I've seemed to be advertising anything, if there's more info I can provide, please list it or ask & I'll start another thread on that basis -- I think I've barely managed to keep this on-topic by focusing on troubleshooting, but I don't want to put anyone to sleep talking about how you right click something in Autoruns to check a file or registry entry, when that's the last thing they want to read.

"many of us have used these utilities for years, long before M.R. was bought out by Microsoft, and already know what they will do."

By all means please do yourself a favor & check them out again -- there's a lot of good info & most of the utilities were upgraded with more features & Windows GUIs I think a ways back, before XP was in beta.

"I just wanted to mention that if you are using the built in audio on a laptop, there is a low latency ASIO driver at asio4all.com that is really wonderful."

You're right Laurence -- they are good... The only caution I'd make is as in the FAQ, the driver's don't fire up, are inactive until called by an app... I think you'd have to have a simple recording app running to monitor the signal, one that would accept ASIO, but it might well work.

Ahh, well, that certainly explains it.
Thanks for solving the OP's question!

Hey guys, let's play nice now. This isn't a showstopper for me. As I previously mentioned I have the hardware option available to me. It would have been nice to be able to use already present capabilities in equipment that I must have on location without adding to the load. I also wondered why functionality that could be reasonably expected was lacking on this Toshiba Satellite running Vista Home Premium. I never expected the tremendous response I got and the many leads for me to follow and for this I'm very grateful.

Let me add that this isn't the first time that I've been bitten by a deficiency in the audio circuits of a windows PC. Last one happened when I upgraded my desktop hardware and continued using Win2K (this was some years ago). Didn't feel the need to go to XP since 2K was working perfectly for my Vegas needs. The problem was pernicious, There was phase cancellation in the stereo signal. Mono signals, such as voice over, would go down 25-30 db in the center and nothing I did would correct it (this was only in the monitoring of the signal but it drove me nuts for quite a while). That is until I upgraded the OS to XP and was able to use the XP only audio control utilities. Mind you, there was a win2K control panel that came with the motherboard, it just didn't work as could be expected.

@baysidebas... This just in...
Interesting *maybe* development... my inner geek was enjoying itself this am in tandem with Google. Now knowing you have a Satellite, gave it a quick whirl, and came across something, though it's still a longshot.

Up till now the only thing's I've seen have been the same o', same o' directions on navigating Windows controls to un-mute, set levels, add boost etc. Seems Sigmatel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SigmaTel] made an audio chip that appeared in some laptops, & they included a mic pass thru shut-off in the registry [http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/18112824/18235810.aspx#18235810]. It's not part of the Windows end of things, but added by driver setup.

Might be worth a look.? I wouldn't change anything without doing a restore point in vista -- use ERUNT in XP -- but a search in regedit looking for key names similar to what they list should take just a few minutes, & if you find you have a Sigmatel chip [in device mgr], directions are all right there.
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"...been bitten by a deficiency in the audio circuits of a windows PC..."

All PC hardware's kinda dismal for audio... anatavism is right about that. Way too many electrical noise/interference issues, & going outboard can be just as bad when you add in the noise from USB circuitry. Then you figure the hardware manufacturer only has to come up with something promising for drivers, to get decent reviews when it's released... after that who cares? :-( Or you can go with Creative like me, and get poor software, but it's nothing if not consistent -- we can still get newer drivers for 10 year old cards... still don't work the best, but hey it works. No wonder Sony & others get such high dollars for their small recorders.

Arrrgghhh, and it isn't even talk like a pirate day.

Even though the sound system on the laptop is a Realtek I went to the Dell community site to see if I could learn something. In looking over the registry instructions I saw something that made me go into the audio properties for PLAYBACK, not RECORD, and buried several layers deep I came across a microphone level control that was muted!!! Unmuting it restored the pass thru audio. Glory be.

Now for the bad news: the above unmuting occured on an older Toshiba Satellite running Vista Home Basic that I was using to surf. When I fired up my on location capping laptop, a newer Toshiba Satellite running Vista Home Premium, and drilled down to the same panel, the mic level controls were conspicuous for their absence and nowhere to be found.

However, now I have hope. I next will compare drivers and versions, registry entries, and see if I can make some sense out of this.

Thank you all for your help.

U N C L E !!!!!

I give up. Trying to duplicate registry entries was a no go since there weren't any English looking entries in either the new LT or the old one. In the old one I was able to pinpoint the entries that controlled the mic pass thru, but those entries did not exist in the new one nor would I take a chance adding same due to the cryptic strings used.

So I found the files for the "working" driver and attempted to install on the new machine. The installer went through all the motions, including reboot, but no driver was actually installed. Interesting part is that a slightly later installer had no problem, but it lacked the important item on the cpl that controlled the mic input passthrough. What explains the lack of passthru is that it's clearly labelled as the first driver version to observe some form of audio DRM, although I completely miss the point as to how disabling the passthu achieves anything in that department. The fact that the drivers are signed by Macrovision should have been the telltale clue. Damn them all to eternity in the company of madame Pelosi and her ilk.

Thanks for all the help, but I know when I'm beat....