I just noticed that I am not getting any sound from my right speaker on my computer. It is a Cambridge SoundWorks set of speakers that has two desktop speakers and a bass speaker that sits on the floor. The sound card is a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS. The right speaker is functioning as I proved by switching the wires between the left and right inputs. I looked at all the controls for the card that I could find, but no adjustments there made any difference.
Any ideas what has gone wrong?
If the silence follows a wire when you switch them, it’s likely to be the wire (or a connector on it).
I’m not intimately familiar with those speakers, can you explain the setup better?
Does the PC connect to a sub woofer which then sends the signal out to the satellites? Do the speakers use standard copper zip cord, or do they have some sort of end plug like headphones?
I’ll ditto Askance’s thought, it’s likely a connector, loose plug or somesuch.
The desktop speakers attach to the sub woofer. There was no sound signal coming from the right outputs, only the left.
But I’ve made things worse.
Thinking that updating the drivers for the sound card might solve my problem, I downloaded and installed the most recent driver for the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS card. Then, of course, I had NO sound.
Reasoning that starting from scratch was the way to go, I uninstalled all things Creative Audigy 2 ZS. I dug out the original disc that came with the card and installed the original drivers from that disc. But still no sound.
In Device Manager I saw the yellow “?” over Multimedia Audio Controller. Double clicking on that I saw, on the General tab in the Device Status box; ‘The device is not configured correctly. (Code 1) To reinstall the drivers for this device, click Reinstall Driver.’ That produced the Hardware Update Wizard which could not find the driver on the disc even when I directed it to the disc. Waste of more time.
So I went directly back to the driver disc and this time choose Repair Installation. It went through its thing and I re-booted and I still have no sound and the yellow “?” in Device Manager.
Can this be fixed or do I have to buy a new sound card?
If it’s just drivers you should be able to find something that works fine. Uninstall them, reboot and reinstall.
I’m remembering some recent news about Creative drivers and Vista incompatibility. You didn’t mention your OS, but you might want to do some reading around this: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/04/daniel_k-who-fi.html
I finally got the sound back. I uninstalled the most recent drivers available from Creative’s website and installed the previously released drivers and I now have sound from all speakers.
What a pain. There’s a fortune to be made if somebody could develop a computer and an operating system that just worked. None of this bullshit where something that has been working for years just suddenly stops working through no fault of the user. And now you have to spend hours downloading and installing something the manufacturer says will work, uninstalling when it doesn’t, re-booting, surfing for instructions on how to really, REALLY uninstall, uninstall, re-boot, download something else, install, re-boot and hope that for some unknown reason it all might work this time.