Ezra said:
Thanks for responding, Ben.
Yes, I have both volume control and the nForce control panel.
Yup, I set it to analogue. and I've tried both speakers and headphones.
No lighting up (as though the volume is muted/turned all the way down,
right?). Everything seems to be set up to appear like the audio is
working, but no sound! Can I assume there's a defect?
Where you have the Speaker output levels (it's not speaker output level at
all, it's the internal level) for each of the 6 channels, it should show the
classic volume control ping show up just over half way on each of left and
right channels. If not, then either the mixer or something before it isn't
working, since the drivers seem to think everything is ok, thats a little
odd and I would put it down to a software problem, rather than a hardware
one (since the drivers install, it's clearly not completely FUBAR), besides,
if you had problems with the southbridge, you'd likely have all kinds of
other problems, too.
Now, do you use DAE on your CDs, or have you run the flimsy audio cable? If
you have the cable, then try it with the cd output (or whichever input you
plugged the cd into) unmuted and set to max volume - you can do that in
either the nForce control panel, or windows master volume control (they're
linked) andplay the CD, does that produce noise, or make the output levels
show? I use DAE (since those flimsy audio cables pick up lots of noise, and
the CD drive DAC is going to be rubbish compared to the sound device), but
the result should be the same in the mixer.
The reason I want to use that cable is 'cos there is no Wave or Synth
required to get the sound out. It's mapped almost stright through to the
mixer, missing out much of the hardware, often you don't need most of the
sound driver working for this to work and is the easiest. Midi (Synth) is
the next hardest, with Wave being the least liekly to work (generally).
If you can't get the mixer to show any levels at all then there is almost
certainly a hardware fault on the input side of things. Now, the Realtek
ALC650 is used for such actions, so it's entirely possible that that chip
has either failed, or had a bad connection from new and therefore wouldn't
pass any signal to the nForce, resulting on no sound out. The Realtek is
not used for Synth, Wave, however, so this seems unlikely if neither of
those produce levels (Wav and MP3, Midi).
If the mixer is showing levels, but you have no sound out then equally the
650 could be to blame, but on the output rather than input side of things,
or you've plugged the speakers into a minijack other than the green one, or
volume levels could be down, or your amp could bu FUBAR, or...
Ben
