Windows Volume not loud enough

[ChrisH]

Ok I have a PC and the sound is really feeble through it. Its connected to an IWB so it has speakers attached. I have dismissed the speakers as I connected a laptop and nearly burst an eardrum .

You can just about hear the sound. All volumes are up in the sound applet so I am not sure what to try. Could it be hardware related or anyone come accross this and have a software fix?

Cheers

Chris

[Geoff]

You've pluged the cable into the line out (blue) instead of the headphone socket (green).

[ChrisH]

You've pluged the cable into the line out (blue) instead of the headphone socket (green).

give me some credit Geoff it is definately in the green socket

[pete]

Is it a case of sound in general being inaudible, or sound on dvds?

We had problems with ac3 filters that made dvd volume really low, upgrading to a later version fixes it.

Has a student stuffed something into the bottom of the green hole?

[ChrisH]

Its any sound really and the students havent had their mitts on this one yet so ti should be relatively unscathed.

[tarquel]

Have you checked on the Windows Volume Mixer [i.e. double click the icon lol] the Advanced settings - if it has any i.e.

On that window, Options [top left] and choose/tick Advanced

Then (hopefully) you will see the Advanced button appear under the Wave or Master Volume slider and in there there might be a boost in their - much like the mic ones.

Have you checked Sounds and Audio Devices applet in the Control Panel too? As there can be options/sliders in there sometimes that differ to the icon in the systray. Fiddling with the Speaker Settings might produce results.

Also, uninstalling the driver and getting the latest one [or just a reinstall might help as if its something like a soundmax or one that has its own cpanel, you can sometimes alter options there that you cant alter anywhere else i.e. like Gain, EQ, etc, and now that icon may have been disabled which means sometimes, its a bigger PITA to find the soundcard's cpanel, than reinstalling the driver.

Phew..... thats enough to bore anyone on a friday....



Hope it helps
Nath

[NetworkGeezer]

If you have Knoppix or another liveCD see what the sound is like. If you get the same problem then it's a hardware issue.

[tarquel]

yeah.... or just do that

*slaps his own face* must.... not.... waste..... time.... posting..... large.....posts.....

Nath.

[ChrisH]

Thanks I will have a go at these suggestions .

[mac_shinobi]

You've pluged the cable into the line out (blue) instead of the headphone socket (green).

You sure you're not colour blind LOL........... Just Kidding !!!

Is this an onboard sound card or external USB or a PCI sound card or what exactly ?

Also does this sound card come with any utilities ? ( Only reason I suggest that is we have had some teachers who have got fujitsu laptops and when they hook the audio cable from the projectors to the headphone socket , there wasn't any sound and it was a few things :

1. Needed latest audio card drivers ( As per the suggestion above )
2. There was a fix for the driver from M$ that had to be installed before the driver was installed.
3. You have to make sure that the utility ( from realtek ) was loading at startup so that they could go into audio I/O and tell the utility / sound card to use the head phone jack and not the in buillt speakers, so it may be the same but in reverse ie using the speakers and not the head phone jack for you ( Just a daft thought )

If its a PCI sound card then maybe physically taking it out and re inserting it making sure its seated firmly.

Maybe when you turned it down from using the laptop you didnt turn the volume control ( external ) like the creative surround speakers have all the way back up LOL.

Also if you go to the volume control applet in the control panel make sure that you have selected the relevant speakers from the drop down list and not head phones.

Might also be worth while using power dvd and fiddling around with the different speaker settings in power dvd to see if power dvd can playback a dvd any louder then what it normally plays back at in terms of how loud it plays back mp3's, audio cd's etc.

If this is a base unit then you could just bite the bullet and get a creative sound card from ebay which should be really cheap considering they have made a lot of them ( Unless you require high audio quality in which case a yamaha sound card or something like that ).

If its a laptop then maybe one of those external USB sound cards like creative makes :

http://www.soundblaster.com/products...4&product=9103

Would be interesting to find out what you do or did to fix it when and if you eventually fix it

[Andrew_C]

Do you have anything else plugged into the amp? If you have say, a vcr, connected at the same time, the PCs sound will be dumped into it. This is due to an impeadence mismatch. There is also a mismatch is due to a headphone being of the order 600 ohm and an amp 10k ohm.