PCA Forums

Been a loooong time since I posted here, but what better place to come for some answers?

So here's my issue: Kind of been out of the computer game for the last several years, but I recently moved and hooked my machine back up and realized I have several ports on my soundcard, and 3 jacks coming from my speakers. The jacks are green, yellow and black. The instructions on the speakers say to plug them into the respectively colored ports. But when I try to do so, only one of the colors matches a port on the card (green). I've lost the manual to the soundcard and can't find a pdf version of one anywhere. I guess my biggest question is what are all the ports on the soundcard for? My research has told me that there are 1 Line In, 1 Mic input, 3 Stereo Line outputs, 1 Digital output and 1 Firewire/IEEE 1394 port plus the optional Joystick/MIDI bracket. But I have no idea which is which. So... Anybody know?

Haha, and btw, I'm using Altec Lansing 251 5.1 speakers, and a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS soundcard.

Thanks in advance,
Matt


Edit: My chronic short term memory loss might kick in and I may forget to check back, so feel free to shoot any help to Ivee719@gmail.com. Thanks.

Green is stereo out and that's all you hook up to speakers normally unless you're actually using 5 or 7 channel sound.

Unless you have a high end sound card though you probably don't have more than 2 channel out.

Default colors for sound are: green=speakers, red=microphone, blue=line input. If you have surround sound capability there will be more jacks.

That's the way I had it before, and now too for that matter. But I'm only getting sound from the front 2 speakers and sub, nothing on the center or rear channels. But, from what I understand it's up to 7.1 capable. Here's a link to some info.
http://www.techspot.com/reviews/hardware/audigy2zs/

You won't get anything from the center and rear unless you plug those cables into the center and rear jacks on the sound card.

The question is, does your sound card have those jacks? An Audigy2 SHOULD. But Creative sometimes uses one jack for two functions (for instance the Aux input might also be the rear speakers). You'll have to download the manual for the card from Creative's site and look up the output jacks.

From left to right, the ports available on the Audigy 2's backplate are: Digital Out, Line In, Mic In, Line Out 1, Line Out 2, Line Out 3 and an SB1394 port. The digital out port is used for connecting external digital devices or digital speaker systems and the first line out port is for front speakers, while the second line out port is for rear speakers and the third line out port is for centre, subwoofer and rear center speakers.
If this is your card use the 4th, 5th and 6th ports from the left. If it still doesn't work make sure digital out is disabled in the sound card drivers.

Awesome. That was exactly what I was trying to figure out. Got everything working perfectly now. Thank you.
So. Apparently the black jack is the rear channel and the yellow jack is the center channel (from the speakers).

Thanks again.

These are the industry standard soundcard output colors:

Pink = Microphone In (mono)
Blue = Line-In (stereo)
Green = Line-Out / Front Speakers / Headphones
Orange = Center Speaker and Subwoofer
Black = Rear Surround Speakers (5.1, 7.1 systems)
Grey = Mid Surround Speakers (7.1 systems, these go to the sides)