OK I'm confused so I'll put this out there. I've got a 5 year old computer with a Soundblaster Live! 24 sound card and some Altec Lansing speakers that came with my original Dell. They have been working fine for 5 years with only the green 2 channel plug. This week the speakers quit working, no sound, the Prologic display blinking and the power would not turn off. OK, so I bought some Logictech speakers off Craigslist. Hooked em up, plugged in the green plug and the center and front speaker were working. So then I plugged in the black and yellow plugs and they quit working. So I plug the new speakers plug in my Ipod and they work. OK, it must be the sound card. (In the Control Panel it said there were no problems with the sound card) So I plug in my old speakers and the lights are still blinking, hook it up to the Ipod and no sound. Could something have gone out in the sound card and killed the old speakers? But why did the new speakers work with the green plug and die with the yellow and black and I never had the old speakers plugged in to the yellow and black. I can't make sense of it.
I've had a lightning storm kill my on-board sound chip. Same symptoms -- it was there, computer recognized it fine, but no audio output. I had to install a new sound card to fix the problem.
YES to the first question. Sound cards, unless wired incorrectly inside and with faults with electronics within their circuits, will never kill speakers. (when you plugged the old speakers into the iPod, they worked... no?) Components will sometimes short out in circuits and will short out in others in little to no time thereafter. I would suggest plugging in the old speakers into it again, and the new speakers into the iPod to see if you still have good wiring on all speakers to their source (check for cable twists). After that, take out the card and re-seat it after cleaning the contacts to the card's entry point to the motherboard (PCI slot, etc.). Trying the same procedure on a good PC might also help. Good luck señor Supremo.
Could easily be microfractures in the soundcard. Yeah it happens, the card is made with strong material but over time the extreme stress and high temperatures can lead to small microscopic cracks that can cause the card to malfunction. Happened to me with a video card. I had to bake the card in the oven for 20 mins and pop it back into place. Youtube "baking video card" and you'll find some good walkthroughs on how to do it properly. Hope this help good luck!
OK It's still weird. I bought speakers from a dood on Craigslist, plugged them up and the right channel would not play. So I went down down to Fry's and bought a sound card. But after I installed it, I still don't get a right channel. Not with Winamp, Mediaplayer, sound file or CD. I guess it has to be a bad right channel pin on the motherboard but I'm just guessing. Maybe the original Altec Lansing speakers just wouldn't play at all with the bad pin and the new speakers will play the left channel. I'm $100 down the tubes with only half a stereo so opinions are still appreciated.
It could be that the STEREO or RIGHT piece of the headphone-style plug is not going properly into the sound card. Which style of plug do the speakers have? Is it the Stereo phone plug? Make sure both lines in this here illustration are fully into the outlet on the sound card, not leaving a RIGHT or : Another view: See the explanation on the right on this here WikiPedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS_connector (TRS and TRRS connector) Try different types of connectors onto your sound card.
The new speakers came with their own attached plug so the problem has persisted through two different plugs and two different sound cards. That's why I think it must be the motherboard.
plug head phones in the sound card to see if both speakers work. If it works, your speakers have a bad connection somewhere.
ok, i have a dumb question, which I think is similar, but IDK... I have a desktop, about 3-4 years old (HP) and it has worked great, but recently (1 yr ago) the sound from the monitor speakers stopped working..I plugged in old speakers and nothing, so I think its the sound card...but on a whim, i plugged in my mp3 ear buds and the sound works...its just thru the ear buds that it works (both), not thru the monitor speakers...any ideas on what I should do to fix?
There are no dumb questions. If you don't know, you just don't know. ^ there's no such thing as "mp3 ear buds"... maybe you mean the earphones that you received when you bought your mp3 player? Compare the two plugs. The ones for the monitor's speakers and the ones for your MP3 player's earbuds might differ. One might be MONO only and the other might be STEREO only. Take a look at the plug: two lines mean stereo, one line means mono. Three lines means there is an additional signal going to the earphones from the plug, as in video, microphone, or other signal that the regular headphones don't have.
