Hi, it's me again!
I have spent most of the day today trying to fix the sound issues!
I did the dell driver scan..... which was what I was talking about in my last message when I said: -
the Dell Downloads page .................... is now showing a 'Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic (D) Audio Driver'. So I guess my first step now is to try to install that?
I installed this today and it seemed to install okay. Creative SB X-Fi previously had an exclamation mark by it in Device Driver, but this was gone after the installation of the driver. However, there was still no sound. I eventually went to the Creative page that you gave me before and after letting it scan the computer, I installed all their critical downloads. This took an absolute age...... I am not sure I needed it all - the CD player for example - but anyway, I have the whole kaboodle now! One driver took about 3 attempts to download, although it was successful in the end. Now everything should be completely up to date.
The audio situation now is kind of interesting...... It is pretty much back now to how it was just before I did the system restore really. The Creative Console is set to '5.1 Speakers' and 'Synchronise With Control Panel' is ticked. CMSS-3D is enabled and it is set to 'Stereo Surround'. There is a facility to test the different channels.
if I plug the 3 leads (
green, black and yellow) individually into their corresponding sockets, the channel test confirms that there is sound from the centre and two rear speakers, but none from the two front ones. If I actually play a music track in Windows Media Player, it is the same (though I am not sure about the centre speaker).
If I connect the 3 leads up with the connector lead and put that into the
green socket (relating to the front speakers) - the way it was connected before all the problems started - I get no sound at all.
I did however - just as an experiment - try putting the single lead (with the 3 colour-coded leads connected up) into the other 2 sockets and the results were as follows: -
If I put it into the
black socket (relating to the rear speakers?) the channel test tells me there is sound from only the rear right and rear left speakers - although if I actually play a music track in Windows Media Player it appears to be coming from all the speakers - including the two front ones - at the same time.
If I plug it into the
yellow socket (relating to the centre speakers?), the channel test tells me there is sound from the centre speaker only, although I think I can hear it in the left front as well. If I actually play music. In Windows Media Player though, I cannot hear anything.
(I do not know why there is this difference between the channel tester facility and what happens if I play a music track).
I hope I got everything above correct..... it is a bit confusing with the different coloured sockets producing different results! My logical (or maybe illogical) mind says that there might actually be a fault with the green socket on the back of the computer as nothing plugged into there ever seems to produce sound. Is that a possibility? I was previously thinking it might be a fault with the two front speakers themselves, but now I have heard some sound coming from them I think that cannot be correct.
Sorry if any of the above is not very clear; I struggle sometimes to explain what I mean well!
Cheers,
Chris.
Edited by Channeal, 10 May 2014 - 05:57 PM.