external mic driver not available - eclipsed by realtek driver

[eja59]

I tried to setup my system with an external mic in the jack on the left side of the omen keyboard.   The only device available in the sound settings was the mic array (realtek).  This driver worked somewhat but collects sound from both the mic jack and the builtin mic on the laptop itself.

Background

After much installing and deinstalling and reinstalling, I came to the following conclusions.

The current realtek driver overrides and blocks use of the microphone device.

The current realtek driver will reinstall automatically unless automatic updates are turned off.

Uninstalling the realtek driver and removing the driver files will remove the realtek devices (both mic and speaker)

but will allow the microsoft High definition audio device to present and work.

I used the omen audio drivers for my device from the HP support site.

Questions:

Is there a better solution to getting the external mic input to work?

Are there newer/better realtek drivers that don't have this problem?

Is there a way to remove the realtek devices and drivers so that the system does not try to reinstall them?

I would like to be able to turn the automatic updates back on, and I fear that if I leave it off, a future update will turn it back on and I'll be stuck trying to figure out again why my mic isn't working correctly.

[banhien]

@eja59 

Is it a P-n-P device ? I don't think so therefore you must provide/install driver for YOUR microphone. Is it from HP ?

• If Yes, what is its model/product ?
• If No, which brand is it, please talk with vendor.

Regards.

[eja59]

The device is the mic jack on the omen laptop on the left of the keyboard.  I can't imagine that it needs a specific driver for a any particular mic.  To that jack, all mics look the same.  I think it detects if a 3.5mm plug is in the jack and then deals with the inbound audio stream from that. 

I know the laptop came with a driver for the jack.  I did not need to install one.  When I disabled and removed the realtek audio driver (from HP) and told the device manager to look for updated hardware, the intel high definition audio driver took over and serviced the mic jack.  There should not need to be any additional drivers for the external mic.  It is not a smart device, the only thing a driver could affect is any additional boost or attentuation on the mic input level.

Through experimentation prior to removing the realtek audio, I was able to confirm that sound was being picked up through the mic jack and the realtek audio driver, but that was only in concert with the mic that is built into the laptop (next to the camera I think).  That was going through the realtek audio array device, some sort of virtual device that combines input from several mic sources.

From my searching online, it seemed to me that the array device should have been an input option alongside a microphone device.  However it seemed to be instead of.

I want/need to use the mic jack as a standalone mic input because the array input sounds bad, and picks up the sounds of typing on the keyboard.

I have used this same mic setup on other computers with realtek audio drivers and everything worked fine.