I just got an interesting private e-mail message from Sven Mueller on this subject. He told me something I didn't know...

All right, I've known all along that most sound card drivers have a "pre-gain" flag available on the microphone input. In fact, when I display the advanced controls for the Microphone on this system, there's a checkbox for that very feature, and the mic doesn't work well unless I check that box. This isn't news to me.

What surprised me is to learn that a similar flag exists for the output stage of the card.

This sounds like it could be the root of the problem: Windows 2000 might be activating that flag, but NT4 did not.

The only problem is that Windows 2000 doesn't have a check box for that feature, at least not one that I can see. Does anyone know if there's a registry setting for this feature?

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Tony Fabris