TVTime, Sound Only On One Speaker

[jlacroix]

Just as the topic says. MP3's play perfectly but TVTime is only on my front right speaker. (I have five speakers, it's only on the one). It's never done this before, this is a reinstall. Any ideas? I'd really appreciate it.

[sideways]

Open up an audio mixer (kmix is good) and try moving all the sliders up and turning on all switches in the 'Switches tab'

(3D switch and slider might be particularly useful)

Then turn the switches off and the sliders down one by one until you get a minimal good setting.

(Or leave everything on if you like)

This isn't really a test release issue but I hope it helps :)

[jlacroix]

Thanks for the reply, but I don't think that it will work. It took me two hours to get my sound working right.

I have a five speaker surround system, four channel soundblaster card. The sound is horribly unbalanced, it sounds like more sound is on the left than on the right, and the vocals are only on one speaker, etc. Its to the point where adjusting the volume in XMMS is actually adjusting the left/right ratio, it's wierd, and nobody knows what I am talking about. If I turn up all the sliders, my speakers crackle and won't work right...

[sideways]

Might find some tips here.

http://www.djcj.org/LAU/guide/audio_quality_HOWTO.htm

On some 4-channel soundblaser cards the second line out is actually configured as the line-in socket in some Linuxes!
So could try playing around with the jacks.

For my Audigy 2 I have the 'Audigy Analog/Digital Output Jack' switch ON, (in kmix)

Then 'PCM' Slider and 'EMU10K1 PCM' sliders up gives 2 channel stereo, 'Surround' slider up gives 4-channels
(Everything else apart from 'Master' and tone controls is muted)
EDIT unless you are connecting to line-in, then, of course, you must turn the first line slider on as well

Intersetingly, if i mute the EMU10K1 slider I get sound from one speaker only (of each pair), something similar to what you are experiencing

[jlacroix]

Are you saying that I shouldn't have surround and pcm turned on? I know that they are both turned down, and master is up, I still get sound on my left-rear speaker. :(

All four speakers work they just don't sound right, does that still mean the jacks could be wrong? Is there a *correct* fix other than swapping the cables?

[sideways]

No you should have pcm and surround turned on but there maybe another slider (EMU10K1 PCM for my Audigy 2 for instance) that needs to be moved up.

You might try putting the 2nd line-out jack into the line-in socket, just to see if that's that helps - this is from the link I gave you above



Creative SoundBlaster PCI / SB 128 / Ensoniq AudioPCI apparently has 4-channel analog output, according to Thomas Sailer:

"...mine is rather old. The cards have an analog multiplexer on board (4051 I think, or similar), and in 4 channel out mode, the line in jack is switched to become the second line out jack for the other 4 channels.
If you look at the codec datasheet (akm4531, www.akm.com), you'll see that it has 2 2channel DAC's and one 2channel ADC."

Jurgen Kahrs reports that some old versions of this card actually have 2 dedicated stereo output jacks. He also notes, "The SoundBlaster PCI 128 is a real pain. We thought about using it in our products. This turned out to be impossible because the SB PCI 128 is just a name that Creative uses as a synonym for 'our cheapest card'. The hardware behind it changes constantly. On their web site they have photos of two card layouts which show completely different cards. But there must be at least one other card layout because we have a version of the SB PCI 128 here which does not resemble any of the two photos...."


EDIT if you are connecting the line-out on the tv card to the line-in on the creative card then as well as the 'line' slider you may need to adjust the 'analog mix' slider (I do), and in this case any 3d slider will probably affect the sound as well ('3D control Sigamtel - Depth' slider makes a big difference sound on my Audigy, but the '3D Control' switch must be selected as well in the switches tab)
Finally, I assume you are using a stereo (not a mono) jack to connect the tv-card line-out to the creative card's line-in