Re: Power supply and sound card volume


Bob Masta wrote:
On 23 Aug 2006 11:08:40 -0700, "Dennis Q. Wilson"
<DennisQWilson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Bob Masta wrote:
On 22 Aug 2006 18:39:23 -0700, "Dennis Q. Wilson"
<DennisQWilson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

This may be a dumb question, but is there any relation between between
the capacity of the power supply and the volume output by my
motherboard's onboard sound card?

I have a 300-watt power supply in a case with an ECS nForce3-a mobo
that I just can't seem to squeeze any volume out of (specifically, from
the line-out jack). The connections, drivers, software settings and
speakers have all been checked and rechecked, and they all appear to be
correct. Another thing I checked was whether the nForce3-a onboard
sound card was generally considered to produce excee3dingly low volume,
and that doesn't seem to be the case either.

So I'm wondering if the power supply is the cause. Will I get louder
sound by installing a stronger power supply?


The power supply is not the cause. You don't mention anything
about your speakers: Line outputs are not suitable for driving
unpowered speakers, so that would explain your problem
right there. If your speakers *are* powered, I'd still look to
the speakers as the problem.

Darn it, I knew there was something I forgot to mention. The speakers
are of course powered, and they worked just fine with my old
motherboard and with my Walkman.

I didn't *think* the power supply could be the issue, but I think I've
eliminated everything else. It must that be the onboard sound card
itself, then, simply outputs a very low signal level. It's funny,
though, because if so, you'd expect there'd be more people complaining
about it on the web, and I found nary a peep.


Line-level outputs should be *reasonably* standard, somewhere
around 1 volt RMS at max. The card-to-card differences should
not be big enough to cause your problem. Is it possible that
there is some control setting in the Mixer that is messed up?
I'd pull up the full Mixer control panel and do some messing
around... can't hurt. Other than that, I'd wonder about the
program source... are you sure the levels are what you think
they are there? (If your mixer panel has a bar-graph meter you might
be able to get some indication of this.) After that, the only thing
left that I can think of would be bad connections, but those usually
manifest as intermittent or crackly/noisy.

Thanks, Bob. Well, I just dropped in a different sound card (PCI) and
got the same general lack of output volume. This led me to believe it
was a problem with the speakers, so I swapped out the speakers too and
still got the low volume. Again, the "mixer" settings are just fine.
I'm at a total loss to understand this.

Is it possible Windows XP -- or the ECS nForce3 motherboard itself --
ever uses some sort of gain control to prevent a volume over a certain
level from being output?

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Power supply and sound card volume
    ... speakers have all been checked and rechecked, and they all appear to be ... sound card was generally considered to produce excee3dingly low volume, ... It must that be the onboard sound card ... I'd pull up the full Mixer control panel and do some messing ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.tech)
  • Re: Power supply and sound card volume
    ... speakers have all been checked and rechecked, and they all appear to be ... sound card was generally considered to produce excee3dingly low volume, ... It must that be the onboard sound card ... itself, then, simply outputs a very low signal level. ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.tech)
  • Re: Power supply and sound card volume
    ... motherboard's onboard sound card? ... I have a 300-watt power supply in a case with an ECS nForce3-a mobo ... speakers have all been checked and rechecked, and they all appear to be ... sound card was generally considered to produce excee3dingly low volume, ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.tech)
  • Re: Mysterious loss of sound
    ... eliminate the speakers as the source of the problem, ... it is quite possible your sound card has finally called ... I did reinstall the sound card drivers and Device ... connectors, or you may even have more. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: Change Machine, No Sound (longish)
    ... and I trow the sound card won't start working on its own. ... I went to my backup directory, where I keep tables of contents of my ... speakers, and it's turned up, and they are turned on, ... Also, when the machine boots, the BIOS shoots one BEEP! ...
    (Fedora)