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I used to have a microphone with a hardware mute, which was a button I could physically press on the mic that would mute it. It was likely done in hardware since Windows would not think the microphone was muted. This was actually convenient, since in a meeting it would constantly be toggling back and forth between muted/unmuted; it would just show "unmuted" all the time.

A lot of newer microphones seem to "integrate" with Windows more where pressing a hardware mute button will actually mute the microphone according to Windows and whatever application is running. Personally, I do not like this. I prefer the older behavior where a microphone can be muted, and the application using the microphone is not aware of this.

Is there any way to achieve this in Windows in software? I realize maybe the actual hardware mute button might not be useful in accomplishing this, but I'm wondering if there is another way to accomplish this, perhaps that would allow a keyboard shortcut to control it. I sampled a couple programs (MuteIt and MicMute), but they both just mute the microphone completely in Windows, which is not what I want.

In the microphone settings in Windows, I tried turning the microphone levels as far down as they would go, but they just seem to resort to the default automatically, so there doesn't seem to be a built-in way of even turning the microphone all the way down.

As an analogy, with Windows, it is easy to do this for the sound; you can turn the sound all the way down to 0, but it won't show the red X through it indicating sound is turned off, unless you explicitly do that. I'd like to do the equivalent of turning the microphone input all the way down to 0, without actually muting it - same thing from an input perspective, but presented differently to applications.

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  • you could disable the microphone/switch to a dummy mic. I doubt that there is any way to change the mute besides hacking thew microphone and adding a physical switch to cut power to the mic
    – JoSSte
    Commented Apr 2 at 14:32

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Reset to default
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The easiest thing, for a microphone using direct wired input (not USB or Bluetooth), would be to make a cable with an in-line switch, to place inline with the mic and PC.

You'd need the appropriate jack and plug (same diameter and number of wires as the mic cable), some shielded cable with the same number of wires, a SPDT (single-pole, single throw) switch for mono or DPDT (double-pole, double-throw) switch for stereo cables, one or two 47 Ω resistors (for mono or stereo), and a small enclosure for the switch. Using a metal enclosure enables grounding, reducing chance of hum.

The switch should substitute the resistor(s) for the mic, so that the PC does not have an indication that the input is open or shorted.

The whole project could be made for just a small sum, and could be used with any wired mic. If you do not have the expertise to make it, almost any DIY electronics enthusiast would.

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  • Makes sense, although I was hoping not to resort to a hardware-based approach. Interestingly enough, the mic I had that did this was USB, not line in, so I guess it had some logic like this!
    – InterLinked
    Commented Apr 2 at 20:56

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