Odd Intermittant Sound Problem

[dilsburger]

I first heard of this this happening in an XP Home config in the family and assumed they just had a settings problem. As of last night I am now experiencing it on my XP Pro machine for the 1st time and I use my headphones for gaming several nights of the week. Both PC's have the same sound card. The headphones are not the same brand.

The headphones are in the rear-out jack. (4 speakers is on) Sometimes there will be no sound in the headphones yet the front speakers always work. After a restart (warm start) or sometimes 2, the sound again works in the headphones. I have checked the connection.

I can't find any applicable (to me anyway) settings muted, disabled. But perhaps I've not found all possibilities. Device manager looks fine to me. If this is an IRQ problem then I simply don't understand how rebooting resolves it and what to do about it.

Also, SP1 is NOT installed on either machine but I couldn't find a similar situation addressed in the list of SP1 fixes. Same goes for the Creative knowledge base.

My windows updates are up to date. EXCEPT - there is an update for soundblaster devices, but when I applied it my sound quality deteriorated so I overlayed it with an install of Creative drivers/apps for XP. I did that several weeks ago. Note: This driver/app reinstall was not performed on the other PC as it is an out-of-the-box Dell config.

Hardly a critical problem just annoying. Has anybody else run into this?

Many thanks as always for thoughts/suggestions/comments!

K7VTA3 2.1
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384MB 2100 DDR
SB Live Value
PNY GF4 Ti4200
500 watt PSU
30GB Western Digital HD
1 Floppy Drive
52x CDROM
LG 12x CDRW/DVD combo

[Sylvander]

Hello dilsburger

1. Are your headphones connected to the speaker output socket or the line output socket?

2. Do you have the little speaker symbol down right in the system tray?
I have a similar problem where my "Wave Balance" slider keeps going back to 50% instead of 100% every time I re-boot. I presume it's re-setting to the defaults and I don't know how to alter them.

3. I believe your sound card has drivers and control software installed which overlays yet another set of volume controls which further complicates matters. I never figured it out myself. I suggest you do some reading of the documentation that came with the sound card.

4. When you cannot get sound, check "Control Panel>System>Device Manager" to see whether your sound card is disabled to resolve a device resource conflict. This is indicated by a yellow exclamation mark.

[malcore]

I would try setting your audio out to desktop stereo (2 speakers) or headphones when using headphones. If you have four speakers turned on while using headphones, you will naturally miss some of the sounds.

Have you tried this setting already?

[dilsburger]

Hi guys. Appreciate the feedback!

1. Are your headphones connected to the speaker output socket or the line output socket? The speakers are connected to line-out as the doc for the card suggests. The headphones are connected to rear-out which also supports powered speakers.

2. Do you have the little speaker symbol down right in the system tray? I have a similar problem where my "Wave Balance" slider keeps going back to 50% instead of 100% every time I re-boot. Yes I use that symbol to go into the volume properties. I'll check out the Wave Balance. Hmmmm....

I would try setting your audio out to desktop stereo (2 speakers) or headphones when using headphones. If you have four speakers turned on while using headphones, you will naturally miss some of the sounds. I have tried it like that. But I always have sound from the speakers regardless of the 2 speaker or 4 speaker config. The thing here is I either get all of the sounds including system sounds or it's totally dead in the headphones. I understand what you're getting at though.

The sound card applications settings look good and the card looks fine in device manager. I always have sound in my speakers. It's just last night that the sound wasn't there in the headphones until I rebooted. No Windows sounds or anything. I've had the speakers and headphones hooked up this way for over a year now. That's why I'm looking toward XP for one thing... Pretty wierd.

[Sylvander]

Hello dilsburger

QUOTE
"The headphones are connected to rear-out which also supports powered speakers."

My son has the SoundBlaster Live Platinum Edition soundcard and I remember reading his documentation and he had that funny arrangement of two sets of LINE OUTPUT connections at the rear. One gave better volume than the other but neither were SPEAKER outputs. He had to connect his headphones to one of the [separate set of] sockets on the front fitted to the drive bay which was amplified and had a volume control. You don't have this set I believe.
I think you should be connecting to the "spkr" output socket on your [powered] amplified speakers. Your line output sockets supply an un-amplified [low power] signal which is not intended to power speakers/headphones which have no included powered amplifier.

[dilsburger]

OK Sylvander, I follow what you're saying... and.... Boiling this down a little further, the doc for the sound card does not specifically say that the rear-out (where they are currently connected) port supports headphones. However, it does state that the line-in does support headphones.

I'll plug into the speaker output and let you know how this works out.

In the mean time, I'm curious, do you have an explanation or idea as to why restarting the computer will allow the headphones to work again IF/WHEN they were not working on the initial startup?

Thanks again!:)

[Sylvander]

Hello dilsburger

I'm rather astonished that a LINE INPUT would be used also as a SPEAKER OUTPUT. Check that again and be sure. I'd love to know how that's done.

My son experienced the same astonishing effect you describe. He was using the line output at the back to run a big Hi-Fi amp and speakers and suddenly his sound is gone and we're checking his connections etc and can find nothing wrong. Then he re-boots and the sound is back. We never did figure it out. I'll phone him and see if there are any later developments.

I wonder if another programme could take control of the sound card so that the application you're using [to play CD's say] would be denied it's use.

Back again.
I just phoned him and he says he never did figure it out and the problem hasn't recurred.

[dilsburger]

Hi Sylvander, I guess I was asleep at the wheel last evening....:D
__________________________________________________ ____________________
I'm rather astonished that a LINE INPUT would be used also as a SPEAKER OUTPUT. Check that again and be sure. I'd love to know how that's done.
__________________________________________________ _____________________

I meant to say line-OUT,, not line-IN!

After I posted back I went to play a game and - no sound in the phones, yet the speakers were fine. Reboot. Sound is back in the phones again. Since I have nothing running in the backround when I play a game I doubt another app would causing this problem. Sounds like the exact situation as your son's. Maybe it'll go away? :rolleyes: ;)

I appreciate your interest and help here!

[Fruss Tray Ted]

I can't find any applicable (to me anyway) settings muted, disabled. But perhaps I've not found all possibilities.
I'm assuming you've been to volume controls> advanced. Odd thing is on my pc both playback and record have line in rather than line in/out depending on which function you are viewing. :confused: (98SE)

As far as amplification for speakers/headphones goes:

Speakers need MUCH more power than phones to be able to fill/throw across the room rather than phones only needing a miniscule amount of power to provide sound for the close proximity involved by wearing them. This is why headphone outputs use line voltage/preamplification levels which a soundcard can deliver rather than post power amplification which is contained in thje pc speakers themselves.

The difference between line out and headphone out is the addition of tone controls and/or equalizations if so equipped. Example:

Try your pc speakers in a 'Walkman' type tuner+/-cassette+/-CD player. Connect first to the line out. Result: Speakers work fine.

Try the pc speakers in the headphone out and again they work fine but now you have tone controls and probably some form of bass boost as well.

They are both line level outputs (+/- 1.5V) but one is merely more versatile than the other with slightly more circuitry but not more power.

dilsburger,
As to your intermittent problems, other than loose connections or software glitches, is it possible the game's sounds are so powerful that they cause a thermal shutdown that either needs to cool down or be reset by a reboot? Some safety feature of the souncard? But then when one output jack remains functional and the other cuts out kind of voids this theory...

Solution: (not cure)
Get a "Y" jack and use the same connector as the speakers. :cool:

[Sylvander]

How about going here
http://www.soundblaster.com/scripts/selectCountry.asp?t=ts

to ask soundblaster technical support about the problem?

Report back if you find the cause.

[dilsburger]

Well guys I found the problem but not the source of it.

In my sound card "mixer" application the WAV/MP3 volume was muted! I must have overlooked the mixer as I was focusing on the media player itself.

But what would cause it to mute on the first-time-up for the day and then un-mute (de-mute? :D) after a re-boot are the new mysteries.:confused:

This just started happening out of the blue a few nights ago, as I've been running XP for nearly 2 months...

If you give up, I understand! :) ;)

[Sylvander]

Hello dilsburger

First let me say that I do not fully understand what's going on here but:

Your mixer settings are configuration settings which will be stored in the registry and read when the PC boots and applied then.
These settings will [I believe] be stored in [a sub-key of] the "HKEY_CURRENT_USER" key.
[Try somewhere around "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\ Volume control"]
The "HKEY_CURRENT_USER" key is an extracted portion of the "HKEY_USERS" key which is to be applied to the current user of the PC.
If you do NOT have USER PROFILES [commonly thought of as "Passwords"] applied [and therefore in operation] then the "Default" key of the "HKEY_USERS" key is used for each and every user. i.e. Every user gets the same configuration settings and sees a PC user interface which looks the same every time for every user.
If you activate "Passwords" [Microsoft calls it "User Profiles" and this is a better name when you understand what is going on], each user has to log on to identify himself.
Each user is given his own uique sub-key under "User Profiles" and in the beginning it is an exact copy of the "Default" key. Each user then can make alterations to these settings to customise the appearance and operation of his user interface. Every new user who registers [with a name and password] would be given a copy of the "Default" settings.
The default settings could have the sound set at 50% and a particular user could mute his settings. Thus, the sound settings that are applied would depend upon which name and password was applied at startup.

Your now going to say "but I don't have passwords in operation" and therefore this does not apply in your case.

Ouch! Ah well back to the drawing board.

[dilsburger]

Hi Sylvander. I'll just save some keystrokes here "ouch".

Thanks for the mini lesson on that part of the regisrty. I should get a book and learn more about such things. An XP reference guide I supposed would do it.

I'll keep searching for leads to solve this puzzle. Thanks again.

[dilsburger]

Just an update. While I haven't gotten any further in tracing these symptoms to a specific cause,,, I checked with my wife's grandfather last night whose PC is mentioned in my original post. After I talked with him I stopped looking further.

I bought him the Dell back in February and he told me about his headphones "not working" at times. He uses them for I/M with family. As recently as 2 weeks ago before my problem showed up, he was intermittently having the same problem and I couldn't figure anything out over the phone. Last night I had him check the mixer settings and sure enuf the WAVE/MP3 volume was muted.

His is a Pentium cpu mine an AMD so everything is different except the sound cards are identical, he is running XP Home, myself Pro.

I am going to contact Creative as you suggested. If i get anywhere I'll post back. I may also open a problem with Dell :rolleyes: on his PC to see what happens there.

To Fruss Tray Ted - Meant to THANK YOU for your input. Your explanation "learned me somethin'"! ;) I like the Y jack solution alot and may just do that to circumvent this pain in the butt. :)