Category Archives: Windows Administration

How to fix an audio echo problem with bluetooth headphones on Windows 10

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I recently got shipped a new bluetooth headset for work. The headset in question was the MPOW HC5 headset. They are very comfortable and have good audio quality but when they first arrived there was a problem. The audio had a persistent echo.

The echo was isolated to the headset as there was no echo when the audio was coming through the laptop speakers.

The echo was also isolated to Windows 10 as there was no echo when the headset was plugged into an Android device.

At first I thought the problem was caused by the Windows 10 audio enhancements settings. These settings include an option for echo. However in this instance this was not the cause of the problem.

To rule out Windows 10 audio enhancements as the cause of the problem do the following:

Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Sound > Left click on Speakers (or another output device of your choosing) > Properties > Enhancements > Check “Disable all sound effects”.

In this particular case the echo problem for my headset was that playback was happening twice for the same device albeit slightly out of sync thus creating an echo. The problem was identifiable as when I traversed to the option path below I could see that the headset was registered with the OS twice under two slightly different names.

Options path:

Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Sound > Playback

I tested playback for both device names, by right clicking the device and clicking test, and found that one of the devices had a audio glitch. When this instance of the device was disabled the headphones worked without any echo.

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An icon of a headset with a spanner meaning sound settings

How to adjust your Windows 10 volume settings so virtual meeting participants are at the same volume level

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You have probably experienced a virtual meeting or online lecture were you could barely hear a person when they spoke. It might have been down to their audio setup, e.g. they were not using a headset and were relying on their laptop built-in microphone, or they might just be especially quiet when they talk. So in an effort to hear them better you maxed out the volume on your PC only for someone else in the chat to chime in with an excessively loud question or comment. If you were wearing a headset in that situation you might have ended up with burst eardrums. Thankfully there is something you can do on your end to normalize the volume of the meeting.

(FYI it is not recommended you test this for the first time during an important business meeting. Sound card drivers etc. can be a bit unpredictable and can even behave differently depending on what other applications you may have open at the time.)

What is Audio Normalization

Audio normalization is a process that increases the audio level by a constant amount so that it reaches a target or norm. Normalization applies the same level increase for the entire duration of the audio stream.

You are probably thinking at this point that if normalization brings up the volume of the quiet person wouldn’t it also make the loud person louder?

That is not the case. It averages out the loudness by leveling the audio output. So when the louder person interjects they should be at a similar volume to the person speaking quietly.

Normalizing the meeting volume

This is achieved through Windows 10 Sound settings and a feature called “Loudness equalization” and there are two ways to turn this feature on.

The first way is via the search bar at the bottom of your display.

Type “Sound settings”

Click on the option that appears.

When the Sound settings window opens look for “Device Properties” under “Output”, i.e. speakers/headphones etc.

In “Device Properties” click on “Additional device properties” to the right hand side of the window.

Open the “Enhancements” tab.

Make sure “Immediate mode” is ticked then scroll down to “Loudness equalization”.

Once the “Loudness equalization” box has been ticked you should hear that the volume of people speaking quietly has been increased. This means you will be able to lower down the overall system volume and when other people speak you should be able to hear them also without it being deafening.

The other way to get to this feature is the old fashion way via Control Panel.

Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Sound > Left click on Speakers (or another output device of your choosing) > Properties > Enhancements > Check “Loudness equalization”.

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How to fix the “Fatal Error: Illegal characters in path” problem during a WSUS Installation

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If your reading this you’re probably at the point of trying to install a new WSUS server on Windows Server 2012 R2 and have received the message “Fatal Error: Illegal characters in path”.

The fix is annoyingly simple.

You may have created a partition specifically for the task, i.e. created a new drive and assigned it the letter E:\, and only referenced the root of the partition assuming the installation would create whatever directories it needs, you know like every other software.

The problem is you cannot specify the root of partition alone, you need to specify a directory, or the partition name, such as E:\WSUS.

A fully qualified path should fix the problem.

What is WSUS?

Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) provides a cost-effective patch management solution to deploy updates to domain-joined Windows servers and workstation in a corporate network. WSUS is fully integrated in Windows Server 2012 and can be enabled on Windows clients by configuring settings in Group Policy Objects – GPO.