# Voice input

Pick the microphone Blabb listens to, control automatic gain, and set the sounds that mark dictation starting and stopping.

This is where you tell Blabb what to listen to and what to play when it starts and stops. Two of
the six controls matter; the rest are preference.

## Every control on the page

| Control | Options | Default |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Listen to** | Microphone / Computer sound | Microphone |
| **Microphone** | The input devices Windows offers | The Windows default device |
| **Automatic gain control** | On / Off | **On** |
| **Start and stop sound** | A list of sounds | A default sound |
| **Play sound** | Button, previews the sound | — |
| **Volume** | 0–100%, in 5% steps | 100% |

## Choosing a microphone

The list is whatever Windows is offering, and the device Windows treats as the default starts
selected. If your headset is not in the list, Windows has not got it either, and that is where to
fix it.

Which microphone you pick, and where you put it, makes more difference to accuracy than any setting
in Blabb. A headset boom sitting near your mouth beats a good laptop microphone across the desk.
See [Microphone setup](/docs/accuracy/microphone-setup/).

## Automatic gain control

On by default. It evens out loud and quiet speech, so a sentence you trail off at the end of is
still heard properly.

The app's own advice for when to turn it off is the right advice: **turn it off if you notice stray
words**. Levelling quiet audio also lifts whatever else is in the room, and a fan, a keyboard or a
conversation two desks away can get lifted into something that looks like speech.

> [!TIP]
> If words you did not say keep appearing in the gaps between your sentences, turn automatic gain
> control off before changing anything else.

## Start and stop sounds

A short sound marks the beginning and end of listening, which is worth more than it sounds like —
it tells you the shortcut registered without looking at the pill. Pick a sound, press **Play sound**
to hear it, and set **Volume** to taste. It starts at 100%.

## When the microphone disappears

Blabb only looks at the device when a dictation starts. If the device you selected is gone or
inactive at that moment, it falls back to the Windows default and carries on.

Nothing rescues the dictation you are in the middle of. Unplug the headset while you are talking
and that dictation simply goes quiet — there is no listener watching for the device to change, so
the switch happens on the next dictation, not this one. Stop, start again, and you are recording
on the default device.

That keeps you dictating, but it means the audio may now be coming from a different microphone than
the one you chose — usually a laptop's built-in one, which is a step down. If accuracy drops
suddenly and nothing else changed, come back to this page and check what is selected.

## Listening to the computer instead

**Listen to** has a second option, **Computer sound**, which transcribes what the PC is playing
rather than what you are saying. That is a different job with different limits — see
[Transcribing your computer's sound](/docs/configuration/computer-sound/).

## See also

- [Microphone setup](/docs/accuracy/microphone-setup/)
- [Transcribing your computer's sound](/docs/configuration/computer-sound/)
- [Windows microphone levels](/docs/accuracy/windows-microphone-levels/)