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Soundcard Woes... :(

Discussion in 'PC Hardware' started by vertiglow, 2004/04/23.

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  1. 2004/04/23
    vertiglow

    vertiglow Inactive Thread Starter

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    This seems so easy to fix...but I'm completely lost and ready to throw my PC out the window. I was told by a friend that this is a very helpful group of people.

    I bought a PC from a "friend of a friend" that was built by said "friend ". It runs great, here's the specs: AMD Athlon 1.2, Win XP Home, 640 MB Ram.

    There is an integrated sound card on the MB, and also a separate sound card installed. Neither card will produce sound from the right channel. I have done all of the obvious fixes:

    - Checked balances on all apps/windows mixers
    - Changed from integrated sound in BIOS & vice versa
    - tried my speakers on my Discman to make sure they're okay

    I know a fair amount about computers, but I am completely stumped.. It looks like that drivers for both cards are installed - could there be a conflict? I am not all that familiar with sound cards/drivers/hardware in general, but I can follow directions really well....

    Thanks
     
    vertiglow,
    #1
  2. 2004/04/23
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    Hi vertiglow - Welcome to the Board :)

    Always possible that there is a driver conflict with two sets of drivers installed. Worth trying an unistall of one set through device manager.

    You say you have disabled onboard sound in BIOS - this suggests that there is unlikely to be a mobo jumper to achieve this.

    Has the right channel ever worked? Where are you plugging the speakers into? Front panel, back panel, sound card? Could be that the connections to the mobo for the front panel are not installed correctly.

    You probably have DirectX installed - try running dxdiag.exe - should be in C:\Windows\system32\ - this will check out DirectSound.

    HTH
     
    PeteC,
    #2


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  4. 2004/04/23
    vertiglow

    vertiglow Inactive Thread Starter

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    I am plugging the speakers directly in to the sound card. I'm not sure what a mobo is, but it sounds like I don't have one anyway.

    I will try the Direct X, but what is it exactly that I'm looking for?

    Thanks for your reply.
     
    vertiglow,
    #3
  5. 2004/04/23
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    'mobo' - you surely have one = motherboard :D

    You should plug the speakers into the sound card when that is active and into the rear sound sockets on the case - close to serial port/USB ports when the onboard sound is active.

    Dxdiag runs a series of tests for both video and audio - the audio tests are those of particular interest to you. Look for any eror messages.
     
    PeteC,
    #4
  6. 2004/04/23
    vertiglow

    vertiglow Inactive Thread Starter

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    "'mobo' - you surely have one = motherboard "

    Wow I feel like an ass.. :p

    I'll try this later, thanks again.
     
    vertiglow,
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  7. 2004/04/29
    vertiglow

    vertiglow Inactive Thread Starter

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    All I have to do is plug in the PCI soundcard and then it shows up in Device Manager as a Crystal Audio device. The kicker is that the right channel on this card does not work, either.

    I'm very frustrated...could this be a motherboard issue? I don't know enough about MB's to know if the audio runs through the board somehow and that the right channel may be defective.

    If anyone can help, you may be able to save a pc's life, hahaha
     
    vertiglow,
    #6
  8. 2004/04/29
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    Yes - the audio 'runs through' the motherboard so to speak and the fault could possibly lie there.

    Two things to do .....

    Go to the Crystal web site - a Google search should find it - and download the latest drivers, and

    Run dxdiag.exe as suggsted in my first post.
     
    PeteC,
    #7
  9. 2004/04/29
    Rockster2U

    Rockster2U Geek Member

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    OK, not that I know what a discman is and not going to spend the time to look it up, but are your speakers passive (without power)? If so, therein lies the problem.
    ;)
     
    Rockster2U,
    #8
  10. 2004/04/29
    mattman

    mattman Inactive Alumni

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    Hi vertiglow,

    I did some experiments because I thought that the speakers plug may not have been pushed in all the way. (I've had trouble with that (static and loss of sound), till i got in behind the case and discovered the plug wasn't pushed home all the way). This experiment did not show a loss of one channel though.

    What I did find was that the main speaker cable got crossed under a power cable and the sound from the speakers became very feint. (I have read about this but have not experienced it before).

    Make sure that speaker cables are not near (or run adjacent to) power leads.

    Matt
     
    Last edited: 2004/04/29
    mattman,
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