Faint audio???

[RS3RS]

So, I built a computer for a local church, supposed to bring it by and set it up for them tomorrow. Here's the (important) specs:

ASRock K7S41GX motherboard, onboard everything
Athlon XP 2500+ (stock)
512 MB pc2700 RAM (2x256)
Windows XP SP1 with all patchs installed

Anyway, the problem is the audio is very, very faint. I have every setting I can find maxed out as loud as it will go, everything in all the driver settings, in the windows audio thing, and all of that, and I can just barley hear the audio. I have to put my head up to the speaker to hear anything.

So far, I've tried:
Replacing the speakers with headphones (good ones, from a recording studio we have in the basement) to make sure the speakers are good. Speakers are fine, audio was faint with the headphones too.

Reinstalling drivers, and updating drivers.

A BIOS flash.

Made sure there weren't any jumpers set for front panel audio instead of rear, there weren't.

Installing all the patches from Microsoft, etc.

Any ideas on what to do, or what could be happening? The computer has to be finished and ready to go before tomorrow morning, so I'm trying to get this worked out... Does it sound like defective audio on the motherboard, or something that can be fixed?

Thanks guys 🙂

 

[mechBgon]

Ok, first two crazy 1:00AM brainstorms 😀

1) you're using the correct audio-out jack and not the microphone jack or line-in jack, right? Believe it or not, I had one guy goof this up. And to top it off... it was ME. 😱 Green typically = audio-out.

2) the motherboard's internal front-panel-audio header should have two jumpers on it. If it does, double-check their positions against the manual's depiction of the header to confirm they're where they should be.

2.5) if that stuff isn't working, pull the board out of the case, lay it on cardboard and run it outside the case, and see if anything changes. If so, perhaps there's a standoff under the motherboard where there's no hole in the board, and it grounded the audio. If so, remove the stray standoff.

Good luck! 🙂

(also, this is another well-duh one, but... make sure the plug is fully inserted. I've seen that one get people too)

 

[RS3RS]

Thanks for the ideas!

Yeah, the correct jack is being used (double, triple, and quadruple checked this), and it's fully inserted, nothing's blocking it from going in all the way or anything either.

It does have two jumpers on it, however I've checked them to the manual and they're set exactly like the manual says to set them.

And, I just unscrewed it from the case and pulled it out and tried that way, still no go...

Looks like the audio may be defective. Oh well, off to see if i can find an old PCI sound card laying around somewhere... 🙂

 

[RS3RS]

OKAY!! Problem solved. Thought I'd post incase someone else ever had this same problem. It seems only powered speakers work with this motherboard's audio. The speakers I was using were not powered (ie, don't have their own power from a wall socket), nor were the headphones, obviously. Pulled a pair of Creative Labs speakers from my personal rig, and full audio.

Very weird... Oh well, cheap motherboard made by people in Japan that pronounce their company name as "Ass Rock", what do you expect? 😛