Problem - CDs play through PC speaker, rather than headphone jack on CD-ROM drive

Hi,

I seem to be having problems when playing a CD in my CD-ROM drive. When I play them, using either CD Player or Windows Media Player, the output comes through the internal speaker on my machine, rather than outputting to the headphone jack on the CD-ROM drive on the front of the machine. As my headphones need to be used instead of listening via the speaker and my headphone cable is only fairly short, I need to be able to access the audio using the headphone jack on the front of the CD-ROM drive, but I can't seem to find a way to get it to output to there instead. I looked at the Properties under Sounds and Multimedia for the CD-ROM drive in Control Panel, but nothing there seems to allow me to change it.

Can anyone please help out? I'm at a total loss...

Many thanks in advance

Mark

 

This is more of a hardware issue than one specific to Win2K so I think you'll have better responses in the hardware section. Moving the thread there.

 

There should be an audio cable coming from the back of the CD to the sound card. This allows the sound from the CD to play through the sound card and speakers.
I believe that it also cuts out the headphone jack on the CD when connected. Try disconnecting that cable and see if the jack becomes usable. Of course, this will make your speakers not work for music CDs.
I might be wrong, but it's a good test. Let me know how it turns out.

Of course, you could just go to Radio Shack and buy an extension cable for your headphones. This would give you more freedom, and should solve your problem, but it won't answer the basic question.

 

Hi miwinter, welcome to the BBS.

Sounds (pun, ha ha ) like wiring has been misdirected (I'm not sure exactly how though ). If you have just bought the machine, I would take it back and ask for it to be fixed.

If you would like to investigate yourself, open the case and check for a small cable coming from the back of the CD drive. That small cable is an analogue sound connector that should be connected to the "audio in" of the sound card (the two other main cables are a large, flat ribbon/data cable and one with four wires, red black and yellow that goes to the power supply). It may need to be connected to a "stand alone" connector on the motherboard if the system has "onboard audio ". It seems like that audio cable has been connected to where the case's speaker should be connected (there are a series of pins on the motherboard that most of the case's wires/leads connect to).

The motherboard manual will describe the connections from the case to the motherboard including the internal speaker.

The outlets for the CDrom drive will be described in the CDrom drive's User's guide/manual.

Let us know if you still get stuck.

Matt

 

Guys,

Thanks to you both for these suggestions. Unfortunately, I can't open up the machine as it is a work unit. What is more odd is that I have actually previously listened to CDs using the CD-ROM drive and headphone jack on it, using the CD Player accessory. However, recently I did use Windows Media Player to listen to a CD of MP3s. When I used CD Player, the headphone jack on the CD-ROM drive at the front worked fine, but for Windows Media Player, I had to plug the headphones into the audio out on the back of the base unit. Now though, it seems as though CD Player, for some reason, is outputting via the PC speaker, rather than the headphone jack as it used to. I assume the only reason for this can be a software/environment setting change somewhere as I know prior to using Windows Media Player, all was working OK with regards to the headphone jack on the CD-ROM drive. I'm using Windows 2000 Professional if that helps any.

Thanks again,

Mark

 

machine as it is a work unit
Suspect someone else is playing with the machine when you're off duty and not around.