About to shank my computer / audio out issues

HyperTension

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 23, 2002
Messages
1,217
OK..... Where the hell to begin.. About a month ago, the audio started to go out on my PC, was running a Titanium HD running through my DAC/AMP (Audio-GD Compass), so I figured what the hell, it's been literally forever, lets upgrade and go from there...

Bought a Soundblaster Z, used Revo Pro Uninstaller to clean everything out, installed the card, then drivers and WTF.. no audio out via SPDIF.....

Alrighty, lets go old school, have a Headroom Micro Amp that I had buried in my "leftovers" box, dusted it off, and the only way I can hear anything at all is to have it cranked to max (Cans = DT 880, 250 OHM, 3.5mm adapter being used via "Headphone out" on card [Second port]) so there is no reason it couldn't handle it. I can barely hear any audio, only if I have the volume dialed up to 200% w. VLC..

All Volume settings are maxed. | Audio enhancements are off | Sound driven though: Speakers (Soundblaster Z), show the volume spiking there | Sound - Communications: Detects communications activity -> Do Nothing | Spatial Sound: Off

Settings via App volume and device preferences: Output: Speakers | Master Volume: 100% | System Sounds: 100% | VLC Media Player: 100$

Rebooted: Soooo many times....

Using nVidia, but do not have HDMI sound installed.

Realtek Audio is disabled via BIOS

Windows 10 Pro / Version 1909 / Build: 18363.900

It's obviously working, but WTH am I missing because this shit is driving me nucking futs... Sincere thanks for any suggestions / advise in advance.
 
Last edited:
When you say the audio started going out, what does that mean?
Could it be some other problem, like speakers or cables?
 
When you say the audio started going out, what does that mean?
Could it be some other problem, like speakers or cables?
The audio would get scratcy, fade in/out, had it out between a volume pot going bad on the compass initially, but then I ran it to an older receiver with the same thing, leading me to thinking it was the sound card, hence the replacement, but it's gone from moderately bad to shit afterwards. Now it sounds like it's 5 miles away / muffled... :: Beats head on desk ::
 
Last edited:
I had a brief moment of hell with an SBZ; headphone output would do some wacky stuff then put out all audio to one channel. Don't believe I tested the optical output at the time, but that was the moment where I put 'sound cards' on my mental deprecated technology shelf and moved on.

My advice: if you have optical output on the motherboard, re-enable that and hook up your DAC. Don't have to install drivers or anything else really, Windows will install enough to make it just 'work', and really, that's all you want it to do. Select the optical output and move on.
 
Well, did a clean refresh, disabled the audio card, plugged in the DAC via USB, self installed the drivers, no flipping change.. OMG.. What the hell is going on?
 
Bad connector, wires somewhere?
Edit: check windows' notification/communication settings, see if it's automatically attenuating for some reason.
 
So multiple audio Interfaces are giving the same results.
What is a "clean refresh"?
Perhaps it's time to do a clean reinstall of Windows.
Reinstall windows with the usb media from Microsoft's website, make sure you reformat the installation drive.
And as always back up everything before you start.
Alternatively it could be other hardware issues. I once had a mouse literally piss on my motherboard, and it took months to sort out what was actually wrong, everything kind of worked, but nothing really worked.
 
Back
Top