Plug in and play

It’s fairly surprising to see that the headset didn't come with any instructions, just the warranty paperwork and the WEEE certification, which proved to be a problem when it came to getting the microphone correctly connected and configured.
I did this using the Sound Hardware Test Wizard in the Control Panel.
The headphones themselves worked wonderfully as soon as they’d been plugged in, a lot more powerful than I was expecting and I managed to get a bit of a fright when someone had lovingly “Nudged” me on MSN Messenger.

Another feature of this headset is the in-line volume control:

It’s a nice solid unit, with quite a lot of range in terms of volume control, however, the mute button for the mic felt a bit loose and there were times that although the button seemed to indicate that it was off, this wasn’t always true and something you would need to be wary of if you want to say something you don’t want the guys on Vent to hear ;).


Getting the microphone working proved a little bit more of a challenge.
After fiddling with the positioning of the microphone and repeating the “I am reading this sentence to adjust the volume of my microphone etc.” mantra that Control Panel presents you with, I wasn’t getting anything, not even the slightest movement on the test bar.
After much voice raising and microphone adjusting, I figured that maybe, there was a possibility that the microphone wasn’t plugged in correctly.
The connection between the headset and my PC were all fine, so the problem lay in the connection between the microphone and the ear piece.
Surely enough, I spotted the problem:

I hadn’t noticed this small ridge above the microphone jack which is meant to slot into the little groove on the jack socket, indicated below.

Once I’d unplugged the microphone and then plugged it in the correct way, I was able to test the microphone and get the sound levels just right (whilst feeling like a bit of a muppet).