If you’ve toyed with your Xbox settings, you’ve probably seen “Mic monitoring”. Unfortunately, nothing tells you what mic monitoring is in the settings, so you may be in the dark about what this does.
Mic monitoring is supposed to allow you to listen to your voice in your headphones. That way, you can be aware of how loud or quiet you are and adjust your settings accordingly to benefit all the people you are chatting with. It allows you to get feedback on how you sound.
Of course, you can also use it to hear yourself speak while talking through a mic. Some people are thrown off by the inability to listen to themselves while talking and prefer mic monitoring because they can hear themselves and their teammates.
Why Would You Want To Hear Yourself Talk in a Party?
It might seem like there’s not much of a reason to listen to yourself talk while you are using a mic, but there are a few valid reasons why you might want to consider it, even if it is only for a brief period.
Making Sure Your Equipment Is Working Properly
Most of us have been here before: you’re at a party with your friends, but you aren’t sure if they can hear you. So you’re just sitting there, saying “hello” repeatedly to see if they can hear you at all, or if they’re just ignoring you or too loud to notice you talking.
With mic monitoring, you can determine whether or not your mic is working at the very least. After all, it allows you to hear yourself speaking into your mic, so if you can’t hear yourself when you are doing that, there’s something wrong with your mic. This makes mic monitoring an excellent tool for troubleshooting.
Checking How Loud or Quiet You Are in the Party Chat
The most important part about being at a party with people is being able to communicate with them. Communication isn’t going to work very well if you are either too quiet to be heard or too loud that it’s difficult to hear you speak. Mic monitoring can help you determine how you sound to other people.
And, of course, if you determine that you are too loud or too quiet, you can use mic monitoring to monitor your voice while you make adjustments to your rig. When you find the perfect position and settings for your mic, you’ll be able to tell. That’s pretty useful!
Hear Yourself During Communication
Have you ever noticed that you speak much louder when you cannot hear yourself talk? Because humans are so used to hearing themselves, they often take it to mean that they aren’t speaking loud enough if they cannot hear themselves, or rather, if they cannot hear themselves well.
After all, even if you have excellent noise-canceling headphones, you will hear yourself to some extent due to the vibrations in your body, but it will be muffled. And, for some people, that makes them talk a lot louder than they intend to.
Using mic monitoring allows you to hear yourself while talking like your normally would. This means you’ll be less likely to speak louder than you need to. This can be especially useful if you are playing in an environment where other people in the area may be bothered by you speaking too loudly.
Does Mic Monitoring Cause Echo?
Anyone who has dealt with an echoing voice knows that it is pretty annoying. Wouldn’t hearing yourself be a lot like that? But this is not the case with mic monitoring. It doesn’t record your voice and play it back to you a moment later; it just lets you hear your voice as you speak. So you don’t have to worry about an echo.
The Mic Monitoring Slider on Xbox
If you are on Xbox, you have probably noticed a slider labeled “Mic monitoring” in your party audio settings. This allows you to increase or decrease the volume of the mic monitoring, so you can control how loud your voice is when you hear it.
Of course, you’ll want it to be maximum if you want to hear how loud you really sound to other people at your party, but if you are more worried about how you sound in your ears, you can turn your voice down for your own experience.
As you can see, mic monitoring is beneficial, and you shouldn’t overlook it while playing!
