I have a Nokia 1020 and I installed the WP 8.1 Preview as soon as it was available and I've noticed that Cortana seems to have difficulty hearing me. To answer a likely question, I do not speak softly. My normal speaking voice is loud enough that some people at work have complained that I speak too loudly.
When I start Cortana and tap the microphone icon I see the message "Listening..." but 90% of the time I can say anything and the phone does not respond at all.
About 10% of the time it seems to hear part of what I said. If I say "Where is France?" It will hear "France" and show me some information.
Initially I assumed there might be a problem with the mic but when I ran the microphone tests in the "Hardware Test" app, it seems to be working although I did notice that if I run the microphone test by counting 1 - 10, the phone sometimes doesn't register any sound until I get to "5,6,7..."
I am not aware of any microphone gain settings in WP 8/8.1 or on the phone itself. Is there anything I can try to fix this? Has anyone else experienced this problem?
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
A.