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January 18th, 2009 13:00
5.1 speaker system not configured properly
The front left and right speakers of my 5.1 surround sound system do not work when the speaker system is configured as 5.1. If I use a 7.1 configuration they do work but only as side speakers, not front speakers. If I also connect a headset to the mic-in/line out on the rear panel the headset gets the audio intended for the front left /right speakers.
Is there something obvious I've done wrong? As an aside, the microphone on the headset does not work, maybe that's related.
S.
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fireberd
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January 19th, 2009 04:00
First, what model PC? There can be some differences in the color coding of the rear speaker jacks depending on the age of the PC system.
Most newer systems, the Green is speaker out, Black is Surround Sound and Yellow is Center/low frequency. Whatever speaker system you have will either have color coded plugs or at least a diagram to use in connecting to the PC and also for connecting speakers internally in the speaker system. First thing is to make sure you have everything correctly connected, as it sounds like something is not wired correctly - probably internally in the speaker system.
Connecting a headset to the "line Out" (or green speaker out) on the rear of the PC WILL ONLY get you standard stereo -which would be the front speakers, so that is correct. Same way if you connect the headset to the front panel headset jack you will only get standard stereo.
stevebreslin
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January 19th, 2009 15:00
Thanks for the response. I've fixed it. There were a few issues. First the system has a 3-port surround sound output interface in addition to the normal line-out and mic-in 3.5mm jacks. I had the headset connected to the line-out and the mic connected to the mic-in - I thought this was the way it should be connected. I also had the green/black/orange jacks from the speaker system connected to the surround sound outputs but the front speakers were connected to the "side" speaker outputs. I hadn't realised this was a dedicated "side" speaker o/p and because they are colour-coded and I am slightly colour-blind I didn't see a problem... This explains why the front speakers only worked when the surround sound was configured as 7.1, not 5.1
The other issue was the microphone. The headset/mic came with the web-cam and the driver for the mic seems to be the webcam's driver. The USB cable for the webcam was loose and this seemed to disable the mic driver - meaning there was no option for a microphone device in applications such as the webcam or Skype.
I now have the 3 speaker jacks correctly connected on the rear panel, nothing connected to the side speaker and mic-in on the rear panel, and the mic connected to the front panel mic input. I connected the headset to the headset on the front panel to mute the speakers and use headset only. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. BTW, the machine is an XPS 430.