Start/Stop will not work unless a mic is physically attached

[furosuto81]

Here's the problem:

I cannot get the mic to "open", unless I have a mic physically plugged into the mic jack. If it do, everything works great. I can press the END key...the speech bubble will display, the name will display, and the music will start playing

If I don't have a mic attached, pressing END does absolutely nothing. No mic bubble, no name, no sound...nothing. This was not the case before I reloaded my PC from scratch (installed an new SSD boot drive). I don't know what's changed, because this was not a requirement before. I used to test my sound files in a local server, with all the cvars you've listed enabled, and it would work fine.

Yes, I already tried launching it with a mic, closing TF2, unplugging the mic, and going back in, just in case that set something in the software. As soon as the mic is gone, so is the capability to use HLDJ. Any ideas? I'm ripping my hair out over this. Completely stumped.

[Renegade]

See the sticky, point #5. It depends on your drivers and operating system but Invariably tinkering around in Recording options should allow you to manually expose a recording device.