Digital Audio

On 03/31/2017 05:08 PM, philo wrote:
On 03/31/2017 03:18 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 03/31/2017 12:18 PM, Wolf K wrote:

[snip]


All speakers are analog. The speaker jack on the back of the desktop
delivers an analog signal. If the computer has internal speakers,
they're analog, too. "Digital" is internal audio-processing only.

They have to be, considering that we can only understand analog sound.
The same way, the OUTPUT of a monitor must be analog.

A USB speaker is using digital output from the PC. It contains a digital
to analog converter. As far as the PC is concerned, it's a digital
speaker.

[snip]



OK, I think he may actually have some USB speakers so will try them.

I may have time to stop by tomorrow
I've kept a set of USB speakers as backup. On sale for $5 so it was a
great steal. Only 5 years old and never been used. That's how
valuable they were. :-) Gads I keep too much junk!!!

Paul in Houston TX wrote:
philo wrote:
In all the years I've been working on computers I've never dealt with
digital audio and
now I've seen the same problem twice this month.

One machine runs Vista and the person uses it just to run some
specific hardware and the
other is a run of the mill Win7 machine.

In both cases, the users decided after going for years with no
speakers they now want
sound...and analog speakers do not work.

In both machines digital audio is available but there is no analog
option.

How they heck would I get analog enabled?

???
I've never seen or heard of a purely digital sound computer.
If analog does not show in device manager then I would suspect that the
drivers are either not installed or corrupted and not loading at boot.


It could happen if the analog audio chip is disabled in
the BIOS, and the remaining feature is audio-over-HDMI.
And that's the one enabled at present as the Default.

Paul

On 03/31/2017 05:05 PM, Big Al wrote:
On 03/31/2017 05:08 PM, philo wrote:
On 03/31/2017 03:18 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 03/31/2017 12:18 PM, Wolf K wrote:

[snip]


All speakers are analog. The speaker jack on the back of the desktop
delivers an analog signal. If the computer has internal speakers,
they're analog, too. "Digital" is internal audio-processing only.

They have to be, considering that we can only understand analog sound.
The same way, the OUTPUT of a monitor must be analog.

A USB speaker is using digital output from the PC. It contains a digital
to analog converter. As far as the PC is concerned, it's a digital
speaker.

[snip]



OK, I think he may actually have some USB speakers so will try them.

I may have time to stop by tomorrow
I've kept a set of USB speakers as backup. On sale for $5 so it was a
great steal. Only 5 years old and never been used. That's how
valuable they were. :-) Gads I keep too much junk!!!




I have quite a collection of junk that I'm slowly getting rid of.

A few years ago a friend needed a motor that I had in my basement for 30
years...knew I would find a use for it someday

Stopped in today and had a look at the Win7 machine.

There was nothing I missed. The machine simply had digital audio only.

No bios setting missed. nothing in the OS missed...simply no analog at all.

Popped a sound card in and all is well.


My junk box is now down to it's last 20 pci sound cards.

philo wrote:
Stopped in today and had a look at the Win7 machine.

There was nothing I missed. The machine simply had digital audio only.

No bios setting missed. nothing in the OS missed...simply no analog at all.

Popped a sound card in and all is well.


My junk box is now down to it's last 20 pci sound cards.

Interesting... did the computer have analog output jacks at all?

On 04/03/2017 03:45 PM, Paul in Houston TX wrote:
philo wrote:
Stopped in today and had a look at the Win7 machine.

There was nothing I missed. The machine simply had digital audio only.

No bios setting missed. nothing in the OS missed...simply no analog at
all.

Popped a sound card in and all is well.


My junk box is now down to it's last 20 pci sound cards.

Interesting... did the computer have analog output jacks at all?



Yes. regular on-board audio jacks

anyway, it's working now

In message , philo
writes:
On 04/03/2017 03:45 PM, Paul in Houston TX wrote:
philo wrote:
Stopped in today and had a look at the Win7 machine.

There was nothing I missed. The machine simply had digital audio only.

No bios setting missed. nothing in the OS missed...simply no analog at
all.

Popped a sound card in and all is well.


My junk box is now down to it's last 20 pci sound cards.

Interesting... did the computer have analog output jacks at all?



Yes. regular on-board audio jacks

anyway, it's working now

I know you're not bothered, since it's working with the sound card, but
it's quite unusual for a board to have output jacks that aren't
connected to anything. Ideally we'd ask if you can see if there are
tracks on the board connected to those sockets and where do they go, but
I realise it's not at your premises.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

/"\
\ / ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN
X AGAINST HTML EMAIL
/ \ AND POSTINGS

On 04/04/2017 05:52 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , philo writes:


snip

Yes. regular on-board audio jacks

anyway, it's working now

I know you're not bothered, since it's working with the sound card, but
it's quite unusual for a board to have output jacks that aren't
connected to anything. Ideally we'd ask if you can see if there are
tracks on the board connected to those sockets and where do they go, but
I realise it's not at your premises.


I am sure the jacks were connected...
I am just glad to be out of there...I did a lot of work for very little
money.

Being retired though, no big deal

On 05/04/2017 00:14, philo wrote:
On 04/04/2017 05:52 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , philo
writes:


snip

Yes. regular on-board audio jacks

anyway, it's working now

I know you're not bothered, since it's working with the sound card, but
it's quite unusual for a board to have output jacks that aren't
connected to anything. Ideally we'd ask if you can see if there are
tracks on the board connected to those sockets and where do they go, but
I realise it's not at your premises.


I am sure the jacks were connected...
I am just glad to be out of there...I did a lot of work for very little
money.

Being retired though, no big deal

---
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
http://www.avg.com


What did you have to do to make it work?
--
Cheers,
Roger
____________
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

In message , Roger Mills
writes:
On 05/04/2017 00:14, philo wrote:
On 04/04/2017 05:52 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , philo
writes:


snip

Yes. regular on-board audio jacks

anyway, it's working now

I know you're not bothered, since it's working with the sound card, but
it's quite unusual for a board to have output jacks that aren't
connected to anything. Ideally we'd ask if you can see if there are
tracks on the board connected to those sockets and where do they go, but
I realise it's not at your premises.


I am sure the jacks were connected...
I am just glad to be out of there...I did a lot of work for very little
money.

Being retired though, no big deal

---
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
http://www.avg.com


What did you have to do to make it work?

He added a (separate) sound card (from his stash, IIRR).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

If you believe in telekinesis, raise my right hand

On Fri, 31 Mar 2017 21:41:26 +0100, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

I was wondering whether to mention the clever driver that I remember
someone producing, that actually made the internal speaker work as a
sound card. It was painful to listen to, but impressive in concept!

I have 2 versions of the a/n driver, but they need Windows 3x / 9x. I do
not think they will work under NT / XP / Win7, but you could try.

Send an email to the address in my headers if you are interested.

--
http://mduffy.x10host.com/index.htm

In message , Mike Duffy
writes:
On Fri, 31 Mar 2017 21:41:26 +0100, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

I was wondering whether to mention the clever driver that I remember
someone producing, that actually made the internal speaker work as a
sound card. It was painful to listen to, but impressive in concept!

I have 2 versions of the a/n driver, but they need Windows 3x / 9x. I do
not think they will work under NT / XP / Win7, but you could try.

Send an email to the address in my headers if you are interested.

Thanks, but I'm pretty sure you're right about then not working under
NT-based systems. I do have at least one somewhere. I don't _remember_
them needing 3.x/9x, but they might have: the standalone .com (I think
it was a .com) that made the computer say "aww, sheeit" through the
beep-speaker I'm pretty sure didn't. (And that didn't work under later
OSs either.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Radio 4 is the civilising influence in this country ... I think it is the most
important institution in this country. - John Humphrys, Radio Times
7-13/06/2003

"philo" wrote in message news

On 03/31/2017 03:52 PM, Paul in Houston TX wrote:
philo wrote:
In all the years I've been working on computers I've never dealt with
digital audio and
now I've seen the same problem twice this month.

One machine runs Vista and the person uses it just to run some
specific hardware and the
other is a run of the mill Win7 machine.

In both cases, the users decided after going for years with no
speakers they now want
sound...and analog speakers do not work.

In both machines digital audio is available but there is no analog
option.

How they heck would I get analog enabled?

???
I've never seen or heard of a purely digital sound computer.
If analog does not show in device manager then I would suspect that the
drivers are either not installed or corrupted and not loading at boot.




I have never heard of that either...

Will find out more, probably tomorrow

Try uninstalling the device totally, not just the drivers.
That worked for me on a friend's laptop (XP) when just uninstalling the
drivers and rebooting and installing new drivers would not work.
I finally bought an external sound card for him which worked fine. Later, I
saw someone suggest uninstalling the device itself, rebooting and
reinstalling the device and it's drivers.
Worked like a charm with the built-in device.
BIOS as Paul suggested could also be the problem.


--
Buffalo