Alienware 17 and Steam - Sound Dimming

Hello all,

I am hoping by posting this I may save some people the hassle of going through what I have just gone through!

My sound is generally set to a volume of 16 and I can hear everything just fine (I was playing Witcher 2 at the time). I noticed recently (around the time I started playing COD Ghosts) that I would sometimes have to turn it up to 30 to be able to hear the same levels. Also, when testing sound by clicking the volume level in the volume mixer the sound played sounded like it was being cut off.

Initially, I thought this was to do with the Windows 8 voice communication default settings (Under communications - 'when windows detects activity' default is reduce volume by 80%). However, I turned this to 'do nothing' and it was still happening. It was also not altering the windows volume mixer settings (all applications running were set at the same level as what I had selected, 16)

This morning, I stopped playing COD ghosts and tested my volume and had the same issue again. As soon as I exited Steam, my sound went back to normal. I did some digging and found that the real cause is as soon as you launch any game through Steam that has any kind of voice chat associated with it. So I went into Steam - Settings - Voice then changed the recording device to realtek digital output and receive volume to 0 and it now does not happen!


Long story short, if your sound dims inexplicably and you have already tried changing your windows comms settings, try disabling the voice chat stuff in the Steam settings!

 

That's a great fix for people who play Steam games with voice chat. Thanks for the tip!

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I use Steam a lot and at least I know now that if that happens it's because of that setting.