Hello there. I have an HP Touchsmart 15-j104sa running Windows 8.1 x64 and one giant issue. Like quite a few notebook models nowadays, it comes with a unified headphone and microphone jack, meaning it can either play music through a 3-segment plug, record music through a 2-segment plug, OR do both through a modern 4-segment plug which comes as standard in most smartphones.
The laptop will work fine when outputting sound through the jack and a pair of headphones. However, when attempting to input music through the same plug, there will be no change whatsoever under the Recording tab in Sound settings, there will no longer be any output from the laptop speakers, and no sound will be detected. This may not be an issue to many, but it is to me, since I recently bought this laptop and I am a music recorder.
Many have suggested to buy a combo splitter, but I didn't deem this solution as appropriate. A £1000 laptop SHOULD be able to tell the difference between a headphone and microphone. And so, I set out to find what the problem was. Here are the steps I have taken:
-I have updated every single knot and bolt in the machine from the HP website. Including the BIOS, the Audio driver, etc.
-I have exhausted every single checkbox in the Sound Control Panel, including the Beats Audio one.
-I have installed every Windows Update.
And after this much fiddling with the mic cable and under every setting, I have managed to confirm that this was not a hardware issue. When the cable is fully inserted, there will be no changes in Sound settings. HOWEVER, when the microphone is HALF INSERTED the microphone will be detected. There is still no input, but the microphone is clearly detected by the system.
Knowing that this is a software issue, can anyone suggest any fixes to this (except a juvenile splitter that takes 4 weeks to get here from Hong-Kong)?
Much appreciated,
Gabriel.
