[ale] OT: bad sound card or bad speakers?

[John Heim]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Calvin Harrigan" <charriglists at bellsouth.net>
To: <philips_jim at bellsouth.net>; <ale at ale.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 11:28 AM
Subject: Re: [ale] OT: bad sound card or bad speakers?


> Jim Philips wrote:
>> Whenever I turn the sound up on my computer these days, I get some very
>> annoying static. I'm all prepared to replace some hardware. But which is 
>> the
>> bad component? My sound card or my speakers? Since I don't have a spare 
>> of
>> either, how can I test?
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ale mailing list
>> Ale at ale.org
>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>>
>
> The fact that the static only occurs when you turn up the volume would
> lead me to believe it's the sound card [...]

Yes, but it occurs to me that it could be the mixer settings. Actually, I'm 
blind and I use my computer almost entirely for voice. Sometimes I listend 
to TV or radio programs recorded on my computer but those are mostly dialog. 
So I'm no expert on sound quality. It doesn't really matter that much to me.

But I do know that I can produce staticy  output if my mixer settings are 
wrong.  There's a lot of parts to determining volume. Someone else on this 
list will probably be able to explain more but ther's the input volume, the 
output volume, the PCM volume, etc.

I've found that running alsaconf usually sets the mixer settings to 
something I can live with. Although, sometimes it made it worse.


Another thing I'd do is get a cheap pair of computer headphones.  It would 
allow you to see if it's the sound card or the speakers and they could serve 
as an emergency backup for your speakers. Although, I suppose people who can 
see don't have computer sound emergencies.  If my sound goes out I'm in 
trouble.