Kinect voice issues

Hiya! I am having problems with Kinect voice. I have done everything and re-calibrated it all, wiped the cache etc but no results. I use voice commands for everything, TV, games, etc. It works fine if i have the volume down but as soon as it gets turned
up it cannot hear me at all. I do not use my tv sound, everything is ran through a surround sound unit as i love playing games and watching movies with full quality sound.

It just will not hear me unless it is quiet! It sort of defeats the object of having a media hub that puts out dts for everything when you can't use it if the sound is even slightly above quiet. The sensor is not too close to any speakers and am getting
really frustrated!! Can anybody help??!! Only reason have it is for all this and it is sooo unreliable!!

:)

 

Is it EA's servers for Battlefield or something else?

Haven't had chat issues if they use their mics. You are running into goofballs using the kinect for voice or not disabling voice chat for kinect in settings.

 

Kinect Not Changing Channels

Xbox Kinect hears my voice when I say " Xbox Watch CNN" I see microphone icon hearing my voice but it doesn't change the channel .

Tried rebooting the xbox and recalibrating Kinect same issues . Not sure if its Kinect or the console . Any suggestions ?

 

see when you calibrated it.. your surround sound was on so it know it will "hear" sounds coming from behind you so when you give it commands.. it is thinking those are normal background sounds so it ignores them...

Try to calibrate with your rear speaks low or turned off...

 

Also, if it works... you just might to express the initial word "kinect" slightly louder than normal for the sensor to start the voice recognition process

 

I use to have problems with Kinect too until I got an HDTV mount for it, it use to be kept at the bottom of my Sony KDL40EX720 near the TV's built in 2x10w sound bar. But since it's not sitting close to the speakers and when I calibrate it, and since I got
the HDTV mount for the Kinect, it picks me up well. When calibrating, try testing it with your speakers as QUIET as possible WITHOUT the Dashboard saying your speakers are too quiet. It may pickup background noise but noise is better than not being able to
pick up anything at all.

And just to let you know, Voice Commands ISNT perfect. I have to change my locale to Australia (I'm NZ, Australia is only 2 hours behind NZ time) because Microsoft still has it locked for NZ locale. Even Google and Samsung allow you to do voice commands
for NZ locale on their Samsung S5. And it works well. I can say Xbox Home/Friends/Messages/Play... and it works fine. But I do have to sometimes repeat myself.

 

ill try mounting it but ive already tried elevating it and dropping the centre speaker so they are well out of the way of eachother and its still a pain. Watching a film is a nightmare. Cant use voice at all unless i mute everything. Its terrible, especially
for the price i paid for it. Thx though

 

Little tip when calibrating the Kinect that i learned was when it says to turn the volume up higher than normal, really crank it up. Not blow your speakers up, but a lot louder than your movie or game would ever be. This way my kinect got a lot more sensitive
to sound. Maybe even too sensitive at times, as i've been on the phone in another room with the door open and the kinect reacted to what was said.

This worked for me at least, and i have no problems getting it to recognize my commands even when gaming or watching a movie at high volume (And i also game on a big surround system).

Hope it works out for you.

Oh, and remember if you adjust any sound settings on the console itself or adjust/move the kinect it needs to be recalibrated to work properly..or might at least.

 

What AngryVato said... my Kinect responds superbly to voice commands. The biggest thing people seem to 'get wrong' is the volume level combined with "background noise".

To elaborate; When you calibrate your Kinect, you can actually turn up the volume 'too loud'... the Xbox will even tell you that the volume is too loud and ask you to turn it down. This is what I did when I calibrated mine. Find that 'too loud' point and
just turn it down a number or 2 from there.

Also, the calibration procedure will tell you to "please remain quiet" during certain points in calibration. This means that YOU should remain quiet... many people have said that it's actually better to have 'typical' background noise. Furnace, A/C, fans,
anything that might cause background noise, if it's possible, have one of (preferably the loudest of) those things running. Why? Because when it asks you to be quiet, it is setting its sensitivity to you, so that it can differentiate between you and typical
background noise... not complete silence.

I think someone mentioned that you shouldn't use the rear speakers of your SS system for some reason. I say nonsense. During the calibration process, the sensor actually uses the satellite speakers for a baseline measurement. If it can't 'hear' a speaker
that is normally there during the calibration, how can it determine if a sound is coming from it (and not you or something else) when it is in use? I have a 5.1 SS system and I always calibrate with it set up just like it is when I'm gaming.

Anyway, these pointers are what I follow when I calibrate (which some say you should do multiple times and actually continue doing it regularly). I can tell you that I have never had to yell (which actually makes it less likely to hear you). I have my wife
and 2 dogs who typically will be running through the house and causing a ruckus at times... the dogs... not my wife lol. It's generally quiet, but not always, and my Kinect rarely misses a voice command. Even when I speak in a relatively low tone, during a
noisy time.

Hopefully something in there will help you out. I do all of the above and rarely have trouble with mine.

 

the kinnect is complete garbage, i feel microsoft owes EVERYONE a refund for it. if i say GIZMO it pulls up the xbox voice commands....however if i say xbox it only does it after saying it several times, i've calibrated several times. there is no fix to
this garbage piece of hardware. if i yell at my dog to stop, "gizmo stop" it stops my dvr progression. sometime's it won't accept me saying xbox, other times it won't accept my wife saying it, it is completely random.

 

^^ Don't listen to this guy; he has no idea what he's talking about. Listen to everybody else, especially Vato and Illusion - they do; I know from experience.

 

thx guys but i have tried calibrating it soooo many time and get the same result. My surround sound is 1100 watts and ive done the maximum but ive also done the minimum with the same result. If my 6 yr old is in the room talking or playing with toys i cant
use kinect to change channel unless its silent. In a quiet room with earphones it would probably be faultless but im a normal person with a kid and it just cant hear or distinguish between me and any other type of noise. On the verge of getting a ps4!!!! It
just seems like a gadget that doesn't perform in a normal environment so its seeming more and more pointless.

 

Could be there is a problem with the device, as everyone i know has it working perfectly.

You could use Chat Support and ask if this is a known problem, and if it might need replacing.

As long as you are saying the correct commands and have it calibrated correctly, it should work fine.

Also, since you say you have the same result calibrating it with low volume and high volume, it leads me to think something is wrong with the device, as calibrating it at each end of the scale should produce different results anyway.

Check with support and see if you can get help from there. I can't do much more from this end, i'm afraid.

 

Hate to say it, but the young child talking is probably the issue. Kinect will tolerate a lot of background noise... loud noise... and will perform very well in a variety of noisy situations, but one thing I know it will not do is respond well, if at all,
when more than one person is talking.

From personal experience, if my wife is in the room and talking on the phone, I don't even bother to use voice commands. It simply won't work. TBH though, I don't see it as a reason to be that upset. If more than one person were talking and I were assigned
the task of listening for certain commands, never knowing from whom they would come... I'd have a hard time listening to both, waiting for specific keywords and tuning out background noise simultaneously. In fact, I doubt I could do it. I probably couldn't
do it without the background noise.

 

Voice control work well on ps4 (one for the xbox fanforce)

On topic tho, OP have you tried replacing the kinect unit? Could have a faulty one??