Win10 + XBone Kinect as mic... help

wasabi091915

Reputable
Nov 28, 2015
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Hi guys,

Trying to use my XBOne Kinect (aka Kinect 2.0) with Windows 10 PC as a living room microphone. I have it hooked up using the official PC adapter, and it works pretty good -- when I have the Windows Speech app open (sapisvr.exe -SpeechUX).

However, if I close out of Windows Speech app and try to use it as a normal mic, I run into problems with it (appears that volume may not be getting picked up). It doesn't appear to pick up any sound at all in other apps such as Steam chat (direct chat outside of game), VoiceAttack, Windows Voice Recorder, and most importantly for me -- the microphone setup (Settings > Time & Lang > Speech > Get Started button) and WSR Speech Trainer dialogs (Control Panel > Ease of Access > Speech Recog > Take Speech Tutorial).

I think I can rule out any physical issues, because -- as I mentioned above -- it works under WSR app. I've tried a few things (including quite a bit of googling) but haven't had any luck so far. Wanted to check if anybody might have any ideas?

To speed things up:
- I have it plugged into the PC adapter, using a USB3 cable, and plugged into USB3 port on mobo.

- I am approx. 10ft away from mic normally. This doesn't seem to bother it much if at all when using it with WSR. I have tried going closer (tried at both 6ft and 3ft range) and doesn't seem to make any difference.

- I am not running any video/background music/etc. Room I am in is very quiet. Even muted speakers for testing.

- Settings > Devices > Connected Devices show it as "Kinect, connected to USB 3.0"

- I have most all my privacy settings turned off (my understanding is that this is for metro apps anyway). Regardless, I have the microphone setting on and 'Xbox' + 'Windows Voice Recorder' apps on as well.

- If I go to Control Panel > Hardware > Sound > Recording tab, I do see "Microphone Array, Xbox NUI Sensor". It is marked as a "Default" Device". Sometimes I will see it pick up my voice on bars here for 2-3 seconds when I first switch to the tab. Other times (or after the 3 sec), I can talk all day and then bar doesn't move at all.

- In Properties for the above device: Levels tab is at 100. It doesn't give me any other options like boost, etc. Advanced tab, has both checkmarks under "Exclusive mode" checked.

- I have tried opening Volume Mixer by clicking on the sound icon in systray. But I haven't been able to figure out how (if ?) I can show recording devices here under Windows 10...

- I have tried with and without Kinect 2.0 SDK installed; no difference.

- Device Manager shows "Kinect sensor devices > WDF KinectSensor Interface 0". There are no error/warning symbols by it.


Also, here are my h/w specs in case it becomes relevant. I updated the drivers for mobo & graphics last night to make sure they were complaint with Win10.
- CPU = AMD FX-9590 [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113351]
- M/B = GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD5 [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128509]
- RAM = G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB)
- OS HDD = SAMSUNG 840 Series, 120GB SSD
- OS = Windows 10 (upgraded from Windows 7)
- Graphics = MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G
- I am outputting the video to a cheap 50in LG TV over hdmi.
 
Quick Update:
Seeing some additional behavior of the Windows Speech Recognition will randomly turn off my mic. It appears to reach some kind of idle mic timeout and shuts it off. Sometimes it flat out ignores me when it is on though. Either way, once it decides to be 'off', when I try to manually select on it will try for a few seconds, ignore me speaking, and promptly return to off -- almost like it doesn't know how to turn it back on.

I tried several other things:
1) Turned off/unchecked both of the "exclusive" option Control Panel > Hardware > Sound > Recording tab > "Microphone Array, Xbox NUI Sensor" > Properties > Advanced.
2) Installed "Voice Finger" app which works with WSR. Shortly after I installed this, I did see it picking up my mic in control panel dialog but stopped working few seconds later.
3) Moved cable around and tried it in my other 2 USB 3.0 slots.
4) Stopped leaving PC in sleep mode, doing full shutdown/start-up now.

Next ideas:
- Based on this:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_programs/speech-recognition-randomly-turns-off/8b970a10-b64a-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5?db=5

I noticed in Power Options under CP that if I go in Advanced Settings, under USB settings, it had "USB selective suspend setting" as Enabled. Going to try setting to disabled and see if that makes a difference... thinking it could be cutting usb pow after inactivity and then software just doesn't pick it back up...

Will try that and if it's a bust, then I'll put Win10 on my laptop and try there. Only thing I can think of past that is going nuclear and doing a clean install of Win10.

Will try to report back so that I don't become somebody else's DenverCoder9 (https://xkcd.com/979/) 🙂

Edit:
Rebooted and was definitely able to access 'Setup Microphone' dialog and have it pick up the mic. Unfortunately, WSR turned off my mic again immediately after I closed out of it, so I don't think the mic-off stuff is related to my USB power.