Posted: 8/17/2008 7:53:18 PM EDT
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I hooked my computer to my sound system by using a connector with RCA's on one end and a 1/8th headphone jack on the other. I plugged the headphone end into my computer and the other into the back of my sound system. This set-up has worked well for about 5 years and allows me to jam out on my collection of music stored on my computer, but for the last month or so one speaker will fade out, and I have to unplug it from the computer for just a second and plug it back in for it to work right again. It usually does it the worst at low volume, and rarely at high. I bought a new cable thinking there may be a short in it, but that didn't work either. I am thinking my sound card may be FUBAR, but I don't know a lot about it. Any ideas? |
That is an odd one. Have to tried using the speakers through something other than your PC? If it comes down to buying another sounds card make sure you uninstall and reinstall drivers before spending any money. |
If the speakers are separate powered speakers, I think its the first of these. There were a lot of really shitty chinese capacitors on the market in 2003 to 2005. Fried plenty of computer motherboards, too. |
I pulled the speaker wires out of the A channels and put them in the B channels. Problem seems to have been solved. Somehow I assumed it was the computer I guess. Thanks for the tips! |
ARGHH!!!! They haunt me to this day, but, thankfully, by now most of them have been replaced. It seemed like everyone I knew around 2005-6 were bugging me because their hardware was dying. Power supplies, mother boards, video cards; anything with those bad caps generally lasted a year or two and then died, often taking other components with them.  -Troy |
With that comment, I suspect it may well be your sound card. Unless you're talking about alternative channels in the speakers, what you describe could only be a bad card. And by the way, probably those shitty chinese capacitors. (Troy: I feel your pain. Its amazing: I've got old video games, Colecovision era, that has electrolytics that are still going strong, but folks buy a component in 2004 and I guarantee you its unstable as hell at this point). |
I've got an original IBM PC (not XT, PC!), though it's a later model with 256k RAM onboard. Original power supply, 1984 era memory board, video card, and disc controllers. 11MB full-height MFM harddrive. It still works today as well as it ever did. Pretty much anything made between 2003-2005 is junk. I've had to replace PCs that would be perfectly adequate for their job because all the hardware of that era is dead, making it cheaper to junk the box for a $300 eMachine or Compaq that has 5 times the power, 8 times the RAM, and 10 times the harddrive space. I still hate to do it, though. -Troy |