Acquired a new microphone (usb), plugged it in, and tested it in the Sound/Recording menu of W7. It shows green bar movement when spoken into. I'm not hearing playback when I talk, not sure if it's supposed to. In game, I still can not get a self test when tuned to myself in channel. I do see my callsign light up, but no audio. Same thing in range. My callsign lights up but, no one hears me. I have confirmed Windows Firewall is disabled. Kaspersky has active control of the firewall. I've checked and confirmed that HighTech/Aces High is allowed through the firewall. I've checked every menu I can find or think of in Kaspersky, Creative, and Windows and find no instance of the game being blocked or muted.
Skuzzy, you mentioned UDP earlier. I checked all of those and confirmed none are blocked.
One bit of good news though. The new 1070 graphics card is rocking the game with a constant 59-60 with most of the bells and whistles turned on. Last week, I turned all the graphics card options on and moved all the sliders to Max. After a short while of stabilizing, the frame rate went up to 59-60 and parked there. So, that is working great!