Sidetone (hearing yourself) with David Clark headsets?
Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2020 9:40 am
I recently completed my first PE flight and loved it. However, I'm having a hard time figuring out sidetone (the ability to hear myself in my headset as I speak)
I'm using my David Clarks I normally use for IRL flying, connected to my PC via an adapter I got from sportys that uses two 3.5mm jacks. The passive noise cancelling on the DCs is good enough that I can't hear myself at all. The mic works fine but not being able to hear myself is a little distracting. I researched the problem a bit and found a few general solutions, including a few from posts on this forum. There is a windows 10 setting in the "Sound" menu called "listen to this device". This gives me sidetone but with a very slight delay that makes it impossible to speak normally. I've seen that, via the same menu, with some purpose-built gaming headsets and microphones there is a setting in the 'Playback' device tab that allows you to adjust the microphone's levels via the speaker's settings. However, I don't have this option with my DCs. I did read that you can get a purpose-built aviation intercom, but I'd rather avoid that. I played around with my motherboard's sound software, more windows settings, and various variations on how I'm plugging the adapter in to no avail.
I know that I'll probably be able to solve this if I get some kind of gaming headset- I've seen a few recommendations here and elsewhere. But before I do that, I have a very specific question: is there anybody here using aviation headsets (DC or others) connected via an adapter that have been able to get sidetone working? I can't help but think there's some setting I'm missing, or some simple configuration software I can use to get Windows to recognize the mic and headset as one unit, and thus get delay-free sidetone working via the 'Sound' menu.
To clarify, I did see a good number of posts on this forum regarding sidetone in general, and regarding getting real-world aviaiton headsets working, but I haven't been able to find any posts asking about this specific issue.
I'm using my David Clarks I normally use for IRL flying, connected to my PC via an adapter I got from sportys that uses two 3.5mm jacks. The passive noise cancelling on the DCs is good enough that I can't hear myself at all. The mic works fine but not being able to hear myself is a little distracting. I researched the problem a bit and found a few general solutions, including a few from posts on this forum. There is a windows 10 setting in the "Sound" menu called "listen to this device". This gives me sidetone but with a very slight delay that makes it impossible to speak normally. I've seen that, via the same menu, with some purpose-built gaming headsets and microphones there is a setting in the 'Playback' device tab that allows you to adjust the microphone's levels via the speaker's settings. However, I don't have this option with my DCs. I did read that you can get a purpose-built aviation intercom, but I'd rather avoid that. I played around with my motherboard's sound software, more windows settings, and various variations on how I'm plugging the adapter in to no avail.
I know that I'll probably be able to solve this if I get some kind of gaming headset- I've seen a few recommendations here and elsewhere. But before I do that, I have a very specific question: is there anybody here using aviation headsets (DC or others) connected via an adapter that have been able to get sidetone working? I can't help but think there's some setting I'm missing, or some simple configuration software I can use to get Windows to recognize the mic and headset as one unit, and thus get delay-free sidetone working via the 'Sound' menu.
To clarify, I did see a good number of posts on this forum regarding sidetone in general, and regarding getting real-world aviaiton headsets working, but I haven't been able to find any posts asking about this specific issue.