Thank you so much, Doug, for explaining how the speaker is producing sound. This is excellent information. I wanted to know how it was working vis-a-vis sound card / USB port.
If I understand now about an underpowered USB, would plugging the speaker into a powered USB hub be likely to solve the underpowered problem (if that IS the problem)?
The system idle process is at 98 - the only thing using significant CPU resource. Everything else is a zero, actually.
Thanks again,
Anna Summers
----- Original Message -----
From: Douglas E Simmons
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, April 29, 2011 3:16 PM
Subject: Re: Sound Problem
USB External speakers work by having a Digital To Audio Converter
(DAC) between the USB and the speaker. The speaker either gets power
from the USB port or from an external power supply connected directly
to the speaker. The program (or service) that sends signals to the
USB port is what generates the sound for the speaker. Most speakers
do not use the sound card in the computer but generally send data
bits to the port. If your headphones work, most likely the sound
card is OK. Your speaker has the Cinema System for sound, and the
computer has the Realtek AC97 sound card which drives the headphones.
That said, the usual problem with broken sound and garbled sound is
that the processor is too overloaded to keep feeding the data to the
USB port fast enough to have continuous sound. Or something is
intercepting the sound data and delaying it getting to the USB port
fast enough. Check the processes that are taking up a lot of
processor using the Task Manager and clicking on the CPU heading
twice to bring the big CPU users to the top. If something unfamiliar
is taking up a lot of processor time, that may be a new process that
is slowing down the sound.
The other problem may be that your USB power source may not be
putting out the required 0.5 amp at 5 volts (Magic Jack degrading the
USB 5 volt power?). That would also cause garbled sound on the
speaker. If the speaker has options for an external power source,
you should try powering it that way.
Hope this gives you some other things to try.
Doug
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Dave@MonroeCommunity
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2011 3:02 PM
>Subject: Re: Sound Problem
>
>
>If your Start up sound play properly on your start up then there is
>something loading that is changing that. It sounds like you still
>have some Magic Jack settings Loading. Do you know how to use
>msconfig to look for something that is starting up that relates to
>Magic Jack or look for something that refers to some kind of tiger
>drive. Magic Jack also creates a couple of drive letters in XP that
>look like CD Drives and a Removable Drive both being USB Drives. I
>dont have XP anymore and Magic Jack works different in Win7 so this
>is the best I can remember.
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>PROBLEM DETAILS [log in to unmask] wrote:
>WinXP SP2 (with a few carefully chosen hot fixes)
>Onboard sound
>Power Supply about 450w to 500w
>
>I have had a Rosewill USB Speaker running for about 6 months. It is
>a wonderful speaker, beautiful sound. Or it was.
>
>Now the speaker sound is distorted and garbled to the extent that
>you cannot make out anything from a wmv file. Same with the
>MagicJack. Although - the headphones still work fine and the USB
>Speaker plays the Windows start-up music beautifully. To swap
>between the USB Speaker and the traditional headphone jack, I have
>to choose either Realtek AC97 Audio (headphone) and ADD-ON USB
>Cinema System (actually the inexpensive Speader) under "Audio"
>playback from Sounds & Audio Devices Properties.
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