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Elite motherboard too quiet on sound

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by michelinda Apr 4, 2002 last reply May 6, 2002

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I just installed an Elitegroup (ECS) K7S5A motherboard with built in sound (with an AMD Duron 1000). All went well and it runs like a top. Windows 98se found the sound card and with the cd enclosed, it installed it fine. But it is so quiet! You can't turn it up! No matter how high the speakers are and how high Windows volume is, you can barely hear it! I tried 2 sets of speakers and headphones. It is like there is no power, but the speakers and headphones all work fine with other systems. You can hear it, if you get total silence and mash your ear into the speakers. Any ideas?

13 replies

by dafunk Apr 4, 2002

Are you talking about playing a CD in the CD-ROM? If so, right click your CD-ROM and under properties you should find a volume bar.

by dafunk Apr 4, 2002

Also, make sure that you are using current drivers. It also sounds like you might be using the wrong sound out to the speakers.

by dafunk Apr 4, 2002

I keep thinking of things....
You say it found your sound card?
As far as I know, the on-board sound isn't considered a card. Do you also have a sound card in your machine? If so, which are you trying to use? You must completely disable/uninstall one. You can turn off on-board sound in BIOS.

by michelinda May 6, 2002

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by thechas Apr 4, 2002

Most current sound cards, and virtually all on-board sound systems do not have enough output power to drive even headphones.
Use of amplified speakers has become mandatory.

If you are using amplified speakers, I would suspect a problem with the motherboard.

Chas

by michelinda May 6, 2002

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by mdelyea Apr 4, 2002

I know this sounds simplistic but are you sure you have the speakers plugged into the correct jack? If you have them plugged into 'line out' you will get this symptom.

by michelinda May 6, 2002

Although I was very careful to go with what the motherboard book and the back of the board said, they were both wrong. Experimentation got me another jack, marked "microphone" on all documents, that worked great.

by guruofdos Apr 5, 2002

Are you using powered speakers?? Elite Mobos and in fact most others with on-board sound do not have any amplification and so you need speakers with built in amplifiers. On board sound cards will drive a 32 ohm load (Walkman headphones etc) reasonably well, but most PC speakers are 4 ohm to 8 ohm and are effectively a dead short to the sound output. Older plug in sound cards usually had an amplifier chip and have a speaker connector as well as a low level Line Out socket.