new hal user,help!

[bensk1@hotmail.com]

hi recently purchased this item,enjoyed the demo so decided to get the full program to make use of the speech ability.i was hoping i could speak to hal through my desk mic and hear him through the desk speakers but,after his first response he hears himself in the speakers and responds to what he thinks he hears,anyway round this without a headset??,id kinda hoped i could speak to hal without one.
 
any help would be great
 
ben[]

[Cobra8007]

You can, just setup your sound mixer properly so that what is spoken in the mic does not come through the speakers as well.  Check to see if your mic is listed as one of the devices in PLAYback.  It should not be.  It should only be listed in RECORD.

Depending on the sound system you are using, the above should resolve your problem but the Sound Audigy has another setting called 'What You Hear'.

[CoCoKid]

bensk1,

This usually just takes some fine tuning with your audio devices and setting your mic where it is least likely to pick up the playback from the speakers.

Another option would be a mic/headset, however, unless these are wireless (expensive), they are more of a pain than anything because you are stuck to a 6 foot radius of your PC and I hate wearing headsets.

I just experimented and found the best placement for the audio devices and it works good.
Now, I would like to find a third party addon that would allow me to save all my audio settings for Hal setup.
As you know, or will soon find out, if you start doing something else in Windows (assuming you are using Windows), you will adjust your volume for listening to music or playback of another audio device and then you have to tweak Hal settings all over again [!]

It would sure be nice to not worry about changing the audio settings on my PC, knowing that all I have to do when I want to use Hal is click on an Icon and all of my audio presets are changed for me to use Hal.

I did find a program called KX Project that will do exactly what I want to do, but it interfers with Hal's speech engine.
Here is a link to the site http://download.kxproject.lugosoft.com/
If anyone else gets this to work correctly with Hal, PLEASE let me know. Also, unless you are real familiar with your audio system on your PC, I wouldn't even recommend installing this. It's a great program that actually takes away all the audio limitations in windows and gives you full control over all audio aspects.

-=Rick=-