Microphone on PC-38x barely picks up voice

[123nick]

So i have a sennheiser x massdrop PC38x headset. at my home PC it has 2 audio jacks, one for mic audio input other for headset audio output. When im there it works fine. Then i took it to my laptop, which had a USB dongle twin audio jack, one for output one for input. It worked for a bit if i remember correctly then one day i try the microphone and no output comes from it. or atleast, its very quiet. when speaking in a normal voice absolutely no audio comes through, it only detects noise if my lips are right up too it, or if its right adjacent and touching the source of audio output. i thought i just had a bad headset, so i bought a new one. And it has the exact same issue, so i think both are working properly and just something else changed on my system. The combined 3.5mm input AND output cable does work, when i get a seperate dongle that has a audio jack with both a headset and microphone icon on it(so i believe its TRRS), but whenever i used the splitter cable the microphone never picks up any good audio- have too be right next too it to get it to recieve any audio input. i thought it was drivers so i updated and downgraded drivers but same issue all the time. i can use the single cable but its a lot shorter than the twin 3.5mm splitter cable so its a bit annoying. Any idea what could cause that? i tried buying new USB audio adapters, i tried 2 different ones but they both had the same issue. the sound output quality was the same for all of them and works fine, its just the microphone. and i know the microphone itself is physically sound since if i use the non-splitter TRRS 3.5mm audio jack cable, then i get perfect mic output from it. but both splitter cables from both of my PC-38X have the issue with terrible mic audio capture.