PCA Forums

hey guys!
my computer speakers dont work. i have a pair of boston acoustics 3 piece speakers and a sound blaster live! value. ive tried millions of things i got a new pair of speakers and the same problems. ive tried new drivers and everything else. but the weird thing is when i plug in my head phones they work juss fine! so what the heck could be wrong.

If headphones work, then obviously there's nothing wrong with the card - changing drivers won't help either.

Was this card working before with other speakers?

Try plugging your speakers into another device like a walkman.

There's two plugs for speakers on an SBLive. One is the front speaker out which is the one you want to use. The other is for the rear speakers and won't put out anything unless you have full 4 speaker surrond enabled.

You sure you have the volume turned up in the Windows Mixer (speaker icon in the task bar)? Turn up master volume and all other slider to about 75%.

If you hear something in the headphones and the speakers are working, you should hear something in the speakers - it might be low, but there should be something.

in your systray, click the audio icon. select advanced so you can see everything.

make sure nothing is muted, turn everything up.

plug your speakers into the same port that your headphones worked in.

turn your speaker volume up.

make sure all speaker wires are plugged in well.

I gotta add.. make sure the volume is turned up. SB lives are notorious for having a very low volume output with speakers.

Also keep in mind that with minijack headphone plugs there are two conductive bands for each signal (left and right). I've seen some minijack plugs where the bands are narrower than others. You might want to try playing an audio source and wiggling the plug and/or pulling at it to see if you can make better contact with the connector.