Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with soundcard

Looking for an affordable USB amplifier.

primer_dimer — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:13:04 -0800

Looking for an affordable ($100) USB amplifier. I've switched over to digital for all my music; currently I use an external sound card (I think it's a "Xitel hi-fi link") to a phono input on my amp, which drives a pair of reasonable bookshelf speakers. I'm pretty happy with the sound quality, but the amp is on its last legs and I'd like to replace it.

I assumed that by now it would be possible to buy an amplifier with a USB input which could drive my speakers (i.e. doing the job of both the USB soundcard and amp). Just a box with USB input, speaker cable output and a volume knob. Or even without a volume knob!

But all I can find are audiophile products like this. Anyone know of a cheaper (£70/$100) version of this? Or is the market at this price point served by USB speakers?

How can I get my laptop to recognize that it does, in fact, have an audio output device installed?

paleography — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:28:56 -0800

How can I make my laptop (Toshiba Satellite U305-S5097, running Vista 32-bit Home Premium) and its Audio Output Device (Realtek High Definition Audio Driver) play nicely together again? My laptop has been having a persistent, recurring issue with the Realtek audio driver. Periodically, the laptop starts up and a red "x" appears over the speaker symbol, and the message "No Audio Output Device Is Installed" appears when you float the cursor over it. No driver appears in the device manager, but the Realtek Driver still shows up in "Programs and Features." And I have no sound.

In the past, a restart has generally fixed the problem; I've also downloaded the most recent Realtek driver available from Toshiba and successfully reinstalled it, which has provided at least a temporary fix. For the past two days, however, nothing is working to fix this--I've uninstalled, reinstalled, tried a system restore, and it still won't recognize the driver. I've installed a driver directly from Realtek. I've unsuccessfully searched online for answers (other users seem to be having the same problem, but I haven't found solutions beyond what I've already tried). I've called Toshiba tech support, and their opinion was that it's a hardware problem and that I should pay them $35 to help me "dig deeper."

So I've now reached a level of frustration that has me writing my first AskMe question ever, and it doesn't even get to be about whether I should DTMFA, or eat something gross, or try to self-treat an amputated limb. I'm not sure whether to be a little bit sad or a little bit proud.

Has anyone had this issue and successfully fixed it? If so, how?

Vista can't find my soundcard?

NekulturnY — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:24:43 -0800

Why can't I record sound on my Vista box? I was trying to record some streaming media from the internet (video + audio) with Camtasia. I also tried with CamStudio (freeware) . Recording the video worked like a charm, but none of them managed to find any sound. So I tried to record some sound with my Windows Recorder, and even that wouldn't find any sound, so I'm guessing I didn't configure the sound options right. Fwiw: I can hear the sound just fine in my headphone.

Problem: there's two distinct "sound" centers in my control panel. One called "Sound" and one called "Realtek HD Audio Manager".

I already read some stuff on the internet about enabling the Realtek "Stereo Mix", so I did just that. The result is the same: no sound.

So for some reason, Camtasia and Camstudio can't find my sound card, it seems. Can anyone help?

Why doesn't Audacity see my sound card?

jbickers — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:48:42 -0800

Why does Audacity think I have no sound card installed? Just got a new desktop PC (this one, if it helps), with on-the-motherboard audio. But Audacity says I don't have any sound cards installed.

In Device Manager, two items are listed under sound controllers: NVIDIA HDMI Audio and Realtek High Definition Audio. Sound works just dandy on every other application, as far as I'm aware.

Running Vista Home Premium. So, is this a Vista problem or an Audacity problem? Do I really need to install drivers of some sort?

Lightening fried USB and Sound card

figTree — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 13:45:50 -0800

Lightening fried the USB and Soundcard on my laptop, is there any kind of cheap fix or workaround? I'm no expert on hardware, but heard that USB and sound card on a laptop is actually part of the motherboard. In a quick scan on the net I came across general info that it is possible to deal with this by some sort of hardware hacks (for the USB at least).

It is a perfectly good and quite new computer with a DVD burner and all so I would like to salvage it somehow if at all possible, or at least have some sort of workaround hack. Any suggestions greatly appreciated!

Slow Audio Problem

popcassady — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:49:16 -0800

Why does my PC play audio at such a glacial rate? My PC just got a sound card upgrade -- a Trust SC-5250 to be precise -- but it won't play back at the correct sample rate.

Everything plays at a ridiculously slow speed. The Windows 'ding!' becomes a protracted 'growl'. I presume this is something to do with some kind of internal clock gubbins.

There is an option to switch the playback rate between 44.1 and 48KHz but that doesn't seem to affect the problem much and there are no other sample rate options. Also, the 'advanced controls' option is ticked but greyed out in the standard 'volume control' window.

The PC is a VIA M1000 (on board audio disabled in BIOS) and it's running XP Home SP1. The drivers are up to date (and I've reinstalled them about a dozen times).

This seems like one of those problems with a simple solution. How do I get my audio up to speed?

How to record electric guitar noiselessly with minimal computer specs?

Phire — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:03:06 -0800

I'm looking for a decent USB-to-audio input adapter, like the M-Audio Jam Lab So I'm looking for a 1/4" jack to USB adapter that I can use to record electric guitar playing with minimal noise, without getting a professional recording system and a $500 sound card. The two I've looked at are the Jam Lab referenced above and the Edirol UA-1EX.

What can you tell me about either of those adapters, and are there better alternatives out there?

Price range is around 50-120 CDN (so 100 USD max).

Help my MacBook make sound again!

zacharyseibert — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 20:00:50 -0800

Possible solution to getting sound back on my MacBook? I have an original white MacBook, Core Duo 2 ghz. The sound card on the logic board died awhile ago, and I have yet to get it fixed. It is out of warranty, and the people at the Apple store have informed me that it will cost $250 to get it fixed through Apple. I was hoping there was a way around spending $250 on an older laptop I might replace fairly soon.

My real question is, if I were to buy an external sound device, that would go through USB or FireWire, would that solve my problem of no audio input/output without needing to repair the internal onboard sound card? Also, if this is a plausible solution to my problem, any recommendations on an external device that works well with OSX (Leopard, if that matters) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Why does sound playback "drag" sporadically on my PC?

steeb2er — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:03:07 -0800

Why does sound playback "drag" sporadically on my recently built (decently powerful) PC? In the spring I built a new PC. I'm using the on-board sound card. Specs below:

- GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard
- EVGA 256-P2-N768-A1 GeForce 8600GTS SSC 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
- Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 Allendale 2.4GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80557E4600
- Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
- CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X2048-6400C5DHX

When I playback basically anything (MP3s, DVDs, Youtube videos, Myspace music) the sound has a tendency to drag. I'm not doing any intense processing (90+% idle) or hardcore downloading. Its not my internet connection, since it happens with MP3s on my comp as well. There doesn't seem to be any connection to activities (ie. the dragging happens randomly, not while opening a new browser window or something along those lines).

I've updated the driver (the latest is from 09/2008). I'm running XP Professional SP3. Firefox 3.0.3. Windows Media Player (same problem in iTunes and WinAMP).

Any suggestions?

I'm hoping for a free answer (not "buy a new soundcard"). Thanks!

Sound card for a Dell PowerEdge SC440?

hokie409 — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 07:37:46 -0800

Sound card for a Dell PowerEdge SC440? I have a Dell PowerEdge SC440 which is a server so does not have standard desktop slot connections. I'd like to add a sound card to it. Dell said that they don't offer them. Does anyone know where I can get one that would fit? I understand that it would not be validated for this computer by Dell.

Can a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop with High Definition Audio 2.0 sound card perform 16-bit recording ?

eebs — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:58:24 -0800

Can a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop with High Definition Audio 2.0 sound card perform 16-bit recording, which is supposed to be required for Dragon Naturally Speaking? The other sound card options are:

Sound Blaster Audigy HD Software Edition (add $25)

ExpressCard Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Sound Card (add $80)

Thanks so much.

Borked soundcard, however music still plays.

signal — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:29:28 -0800

The integrated sound card on my 6 year old PC is apparently dead, but LastFM standalone player still plays music. Yesterday I was a bit rough with my XP sr2 PC (trying to get the side cover to close), and when it booted back up, I don't have a sound card anymore. No volume icon in taskbar, no soundcard under hardware, etc. The card is an integrated 'via voice'. I tried getting my computer to auto-recognize the card, no dice.
However, I opened the LastFM standalone player, and it works (i.e.:I hear music). The program's volume control works as well, but I have no system wide volume controls, and the volume and mute buttons on my keyboard don't do anything either.
So the card is working at some level, but windows seems to think not.
This is strange.
Should I even bother trying to sort this out?

getting the most out of my cans

pilibeen — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:57:05 -0800

How can I get the most out of my Sennheiser HD 280 Pro's? I picked up a pair of Sennheiser HD280 Pros the other month, and while they sound nice, I still hear some buzzing and don't think they quite live up to my old Grado SR-60s. I love the closed design though so I won't be going back.

My headphones are plugged straight into my PC's soundcard, which is a Soundblaster Live! 24bit. Would I be better off upgrading this card or maybe getting a headphone amp? I also hate having to go to my taskbar to adjust the volume...

I'm on a pretty tight budget, and probably not willing to spend more than $75 or so.

Thanks

Sound card recommendations?

trokair — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 21:32:57 -0800

[SoundCardFilter] What are your recommendations for a PCI-based gaming sound card on Windows Vista? I'm using Vista Ultimate 32-bit right now, and the popping, crackling sound and low-volume mic inputs on my Shuttle SD39P2 (Realtek ALC888 built-in sound) are starting to get to me. What are your recommendations for a high-end PCI sound card? I do a lot of gaming and listening to music!

I'd especially like to hear if anyone's had some good experiences with non-Creative products (I've heard not-so-good things about their Vista drivers). Thanks folks!

Misbehaving Ubuntu box, normally well behaved and reliable, needs help.

cgg — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:42:28 -0800

UbuntuFilter:Linux people - how would you troubleshoot this one? All of a sudden my sound card doesn't exist, my CD burner doesn't burn, and fusermount doesn't want to work anymore. Everything was fine on Monday. Any suggestions on how to figure out WTF is going on? The longer story:
My work desktop is running Ubuntu Dapper. I came to work on Tuesday to find I had left my streaming audio on, ie I was still hearing audio through my headphones. However - my box was in an odd state. The keyboard was not responding, the mouse was responding sporadically. I couldn't log in - no keyboard. I tried to ssh into the box from another machine, but that didn't work - I didn't get any response. At that point I just rebooted via the power button. While the box rebooted, fsck was run - it apparently found and fixed some errors in the root partition, and rebooted itself. Finally, once the box was finally up and I was logged in, I noticed the soundcard (a crappy onboard soundcard) was apparently no longer installed.

I updated everything that was pending (i'm a little slack on keeping up with updates). I followed the instructions in this thread, hoping to fox my sound issues, including reinstalling and recompiling galore, but nothing will make Ubuntu see my soundcard again. I also posted to the same forum (link), but no one there has said anything.

In the meantime, thinking maybe now would be a good time to make some backups, I've realized that my CD burner is no longer working. I get a generic error message. Right before any burning starts - "An error occurred while writing". Helpful.

Also, to further confuse things - fusermount no longer wants to work. I use it on a daily basis to mount different machines I have ssh access to via sshfs, and it's worked flawlessly for well over a year. Now, I get this: 'fusermount: mount failed: Operation not permitted'. This happens no matter what I do - it doesn't matter which machine I try to mount, it doesn't work.

I can't help but think this is all related. Bad memory? Flaky harddrive? Linux gurus - what would you do? (Oh, our long time sysadmin quit a couple months ago, so I'm pretty much on my own here...) I'm getting someone else to download and burn me a LiveCD (Gutsy), but that'll take a couple hours. I'm not a linux newbie by any means, but I'm definitely not an expert. I'm a developer; my strengths are not in debugging installs or hardware. That being said, I can check log files (if I know which one to check), google with the best of them and follow directions, but having done all that, I'm now here asking if any linux mefiers have any insights or suggestions? If this was your box - what would you do?

A good 'ol-fashioned driver hunt

tumult — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:02:12 -0800

Here's a long shot: I'm looking for drivers for a super obscure piece of hardware from early in the decade. Specifically, a PCI souncard made by SeaSound called the SeaSound Solo EX. More specifically, the Mac OS 9 version of the drivers. The company went bust some years ago. You can see their old webpage here but the link to download the drivers is very much dead. I know there's a project that created new drivers for Windows to use the Solo; I have the card in an old PowerMac G4 and intend to run legacy software on it.

Googling the filename (solodrivers131.hqx) didn't turn up anything. I realize there's probably no way in hell I'm ever going to find this file, but I can't give up without a fight.

Multichannel PC test tone?

ijoyner — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 07:55:24 -0800

Sound Blaster from PC to 5.1 A/V Receiver. It is already hooked up with a digital Coax cable to the DVD input. It passes encoded data great (DTS, DD5.1) and the two channel 48kHz sounds great when there isn't an encoded stream. But it doesn't work for games. I still have an analog 5.1 input I can use, but need 3 "Y-adapter" type audio cables. Would this work? How could I ensure my mappings are correct? First off, If I am mistaken and there is a way to play EAX (game encoded) multi-channel sound through that Coax output, let me know.

Otherwise, how can I ensure that my inputs are proper. Is there a multichannel test tone applet I could use to play around with the system and ensure that the proper RCA plug is going to the proper channel?

Any other ideas on this subject?

A simple PC audio recording set up

ztdavis — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 22:24:05 -0800

Using a no-frills but decent PC, what (cheapish) sound card and what software should I buy for my father so he can record his guitar playing and singing as well as do basic mixing and editing? My dad has played guitar all of his life and has done a lot of recording to cassette tapes. I know he has decent microphones, etc, but I really think he would enjoy recording his music onto the PC so he can have greater-than-cassette quality and an easier way to put things to CD or e-mail mp3s.

I have no experience with recording sound, however, and don't even know where to begin discerning between good and bad sound cards.

Furthermore, my dad is in his 50s and he is pretty good with computers but certainly has never done any sound mixing or editing type stuff on a PC. What software is capable, but not overly complicated?

Looking to spend less than $100 on the card, and I don't even know what to plan for the software so I guess anything is game. ...(within reason).

Tunneling audio over TCP/IP

spaceman_spiff — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 14:35:25 -0800

How can I play audio from one computer through another computer's sound card? At home, I have a server running Debian, which usually has a medium-range wireless headset plugged into it. My time is split between that and a Powerbook running OS X. Which one I use depends on the activity at hand - I use the Debian machine for gaming and music, while the Powerbook tends to get used while I'm online or watching web video.

I was very happy to find mocp, letting me control my music from the Powerbook, but I'd like to make it more general. Ideally, I'd be able to leave the headset's transmitter plugged into the server all the time, but have it play the audio generated by random applications on my Powerbook.

So is there a way to have my Powerbook send audio to esd or alsa on the Debian box? A sort of remote soundcard, I guess. I'm comfortable fiddling with SSH tunneling and config files, but I don't really know anything about how ALSA works (or OS X audio, for that matter).

the phantom sweeper

andrewzipp — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 12:15:06 -0800

Some program on my new computer automatically makes a sound that kind of sounds like a broom sweeping every few minutes. I can't figure out what it is. I always turn off optional sounds, and I've got the windows system sounds turned off. It doesn't seem related to anything in particular. It's one longer stroke followed by a shorter one....swiiiiiiish swish

It's not a popup ad or anything either, it happens even when Firefox is closed.

If I could mute all sounds except for what comes out of foobar I would, otherwise I'd like to track it down and STOP IT.

Soundcard interference but only over KVM?

cyrusdogstar — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 18:12:31 -0800

I need help figuring out a strange audio interference issue with my computer setup, involving headphones, a KVM, and an apparent contradiction. The setup: iMac, custom-built gaming PC, nice pair of headphones, plenty of cables. Until today, I had speakers hooked up to the iMac and the headphone jacked into the PC, and everything was fine. Today, wanting to use the headphones on both machines, I bought an ioGear KVM which includes audio switching, hooked it up, and now the PC - and only the PC - is generating irritating background noise.

So, with headphones on, I have the KVM set to the iMac. The connection goes headphones -> KVM -> KVM cable -> iMac. The sound is perfect. I then switch the KVM to the PC's port, and get a decently loud background hum/buzz noise, including various additional sounds when the mouse moves, hard disk spins up, network activity, etc.

Plugging the headphones straight into the PC results in perfect quality, as before. So if it's not the sound card (or the problem would exist with the direct connection) or the KVM cabling (or the problem would exist with both machines) then what is it?

Additional caveats: I think I can rule out nearby cable interference and the sound card, as both KVM connections have other cables nearby, and the issue happens with both my onboard and expansion sound cards (but to a lesser extent with the onboard). I also recall a similar issue with other KVMs in the past.

Third party stereo mix recording

punishinglemur — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 10:02:25 -0800

Is there any way to do Stereo Mix recording in Windows Vista when the soundcard does not support this feature?

soundcard problem

sgt.serenity — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 16:45:44 -0800

Onboard soundcard problem. i've got the asrock alivenf4g-dvi/m/asr motherboard with the onboard soundcard , unfortunately when i play anything now , i can only hear out of one speaker, it doesnt play in stereo anymore - can anyone help ?

Will i need to remove and replace my soundcard for windows to recognise it?

freddymetz — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:39:18 -0800

Will i need to remove and replace my soundcard for windows to recognise it? Sound card driver is installed but the hardware itself isnt recognised. Im not very tech savvy and im scared of opening my pc. I usually use ubuntu linux but now i reformatted and installed windows XP. The problem is my sound card, i have the driver installed, but the hardware itself isnt being recognised. Any suggestions?

Unable to DVDs with sound on laptop

sk381 — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 03:46:37 -0800

When I play DVDs on my laptop, there is no sound accompanying the picture. The sound card is working fine and I can play music etc. without any problem. It is only with DVDs that this problem seems to exist. I have upgraded my DVD software (PowerDVD) but to no avail. Any suggestions what could be happening here?