[rudedog]

Yep, mine is a cheap labtec

I have separate controls on my audigy sound card that allows me to raid and lower the gain on my mic. externally via hardware.

I also have mic gains on the audigy "box" sticking out of my PC, the headset and WinXP. I had to play around with all of them. so I was not picking up ambient sound in my room

I performed the loop back test and it sounded fine to me

I also use PTT ( push to talk )