a VERY odd sound problem - Solve and win a prize

rexehuk

rexehuk

rexehuk

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Joined
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Ok so no prize, but this is a very interesting issue I've never come across in my 15 years or so in computing.

The specs related to the issue:

Asus P6T (Sound Disabled)
Asus Xonar DS
Windows 7 X64

The Problem

It seems I cannot turn down the audio within windows 7. Upon turning down the volume control to 0, the sound meerly shifts to the right speaker (Or right ear when using headphones).

This occurs with the rear jack and the front panel port. Happening on speakers and headphones (originally thought headphones were nackered).

It has got to the point where it is very frustrating, having to manually turn down volume from within games or movie applications.

If anyone can come up with a reason for this, I would be grateful!

Rob
 
Sounds like a driver issue with the Xonar to me. I take it you have tried reinstalling the driver and/or looking for an updated one?
 
philtorrens said:
Sounds like a driver issue with the Xonar to me. I take it you have tried reinstalling the driver and/or looking for an updated one?
Click to expand...

Was the first thing I tried, Uninstalled driver rebooted and reinstalled. No such luck! I'm thinking it could be a software conflict along the way... cause it wasn't always like this. Only other thing that comes to mind is a potential hardware fault.
 
philtorrens said:
What a bizarre problem! Could you stick the card into another machine to test?
Click to expand...

Nope, other machine is not mine and is used for business purposes.

Justintime said:
Do that if you can^

Also any other driver revision you can test with?
Click to expand...

I don't know if this would be useful, there are only two drivers out for W7 X64 from Asus. I used the original one until this problem came about, so I then updated to the latest one and go no joy.

If you know any custom drivers etc Id be happy to try them!
 
Btw, this ONLY happens with the main volume control. If I have VLC open for example and click the sound tab and turn down the VLC program volume via that option then it works fine. So only the overall windows volume control fails to kill the sound.

Perhaps I could uninstall the volume manager under system devices?
 
I'd probably go with software, run a virtual machine or dual boot an OS see what happens in it, if the sound works fine then it is a software problem, an application is causing balance to be shifted everytime you use the main volume control.

If you still get it on a virtual machine/dual boot OS, unfortunately it is going to be hardware.
 
Im convinced this is a driver issue, but can't figure why it would suddenly happen. Channel balance is controlled by the driver and o/s but it would be nice to see if it happens on another machine none the less. For some reason when you move the volume control the driver is not telling the hardware how to respond properly. I would try and find another machine to test before doing a clean install.
 
Weird... this does sound like a driver or setup issue rather than a hardware fault.
Is there any chance that the channels are mapped oddly and that the win7 volume control isn't setup to control all channels. E.g. if front-right output was set to be from the side-right channel, and win7 is config'd for 5.1 audio so doesn't adjust the side channel volume... (hope that makes some sense!) I'd be double checking the speaker setup, both within the xonar driver and windows.
I don't know the xonar at all, but are there any utilities provided to play "this is front right" (etc.) from each speaker in turn to test if there is anything odd like this going on?
 
Go on the speaker test on the Xonar control panel (little loadspeaker icon next to analog out) and see what it sounds like. Also try playing around with different audio modes and different audio channel and analog out setups (even if they don't correspond to your actual speaker setup). Your problem is very perplexing indeed. I have a Xonar D2X on Win7 64 and have never encountered this.
 
maybe it's something to do with the surround sound drivers? my sound always messes up when i go on skype and then all programmes that use audio won't load up.
 
Might seem an odd suggestion but have you tried creating another account on the system and see if it behaves in the new account as I have seen odd behaviour like this before which has sometimes been caused by a corrupt account. Overall I must say it sounds as though it is a driver issue, but hardware can not be entirely ruled out yet.

Mark
 
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