New machine, old speakers

[LouB]

Friend got a new, low end win7 desktop.
Using her old Samsung monitor which works fine.
Pair of dinky speakers are not doing well. Are there new drivers for
cheap speakers? Win7 64bit.

TIA

 

[jbm]

"LouB" wrote in message
Friend got a new, low end win7 desktop.
Using her old Samsung monitor which works fine.
Pair of dinky speakers are not doing well. Are there new drivers for
cheap speakers? Win7 64bit.

TIA

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If your version of Windows 7 was set up like mine was, then you need to get
into the sound properties dialog.

Control Panel > Sound > Playback, and double click on Speakers. Under the
Enhancements tab, have a play around with the Environment and Equaliser
settings until you get a decent sound. I've got a reasonably decent
amplifier/mixer and speakers connected to this computer, and when I first
switched it all on, the sound was absolute crap. It sounded like it was
coming out of the bottom of a dustbin filled with pebbles. It'll take you
some time to get a decent balance from it, but as a guide I use "Living
Room" and "Club" respectively under those settings. Works for rock and
classical really well.

jim

 

[Bob I]

Speakers don't have drivers. If the speakers are unpowered, then the
audio card can't supply enough wattage to drive them, time to spend
another $10

 

[VanguardLH]

Friend got a new, low end win7 desktop.
Using her old Samsung monitor which works fine.
Pair of dinky speakers are not doing well. Are there new drivers for
cheap speakers? Win7 64bit.

TIA

Speakers don't require drivers. The driver is already built into each
speaker (it's the magnet & coil).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_driver

You never mentioned to just WHAT these external speakers connect. Could
it be to backpanel connectors in the system case that come from the
motherboard? Well, if so, did this "friend" ever get around to
installing the motherboard's chipset driver package? Since you never
identify the brand and model for the motherboard, you'll have to search
the motherboard or system maker's web site for the chipset drivers.

You never mentioned WHO did the install of Windows 7. Was it this
"friend", you, or a pre-built computer that comes with Windows 7
pre-installed (along with all the other fluff)? If it was
pre-installed, maybe the problem is in configuring the settings for the
audio devices that "are not doing well" - whatever that means.

Don't know what your friend had for their prior hardware. Maybe they
had a daughtercard that had high-level outputs usable with unpowered
external speakers. "not doing well" could be, as just one possible
guess, that the volume is very low. The new mobo's audio connectors
might only be line-out jacks and require you connect *powered* external
speakers to them. Could be the external speakers have their own volume
control and it got turned way down.

Connect a pair of working headphones to the audio jacks in the backpanel
of the system case (which connect to the motherboard). Test the
headphones with some other line-out device, like a portable audio
device, your stereo system's audio out jack, or the audio jack on your
television. Then plug it into the audio jacks on the back of the
computer case. Is the sound "not doing well" with the headphones, too?
If the headphones are low volume then putz with the audio device
properties in Control Panel.

If the "not doing well" is something other than low volume, well, we'll
only know when you tell us what "not doing well" really means.

 

[choro]

Speakers don't have drivers. If the speakers are unpowered, then the
audio card can't supply enough wattage to drive them, time to spend
another $10

Is that the value you attach to a decent sound? You get a $10 amp?!

Get a decent stereo amp for heaven's sake. And it doesn't matter if it
is new or second hand so long as it works OK. And some decent if only
second hand speakers and THEN you will get decent sound, providing your
sound card is not crap of course! As they say: Rubbish In, Rubbish Out
or RIRO.

And there is absolutely no need to fool around with settings except to
check that everything's OK! In fact audiophiles generally disable tone
controls on their amps or preamps!

And what was it that jim said...

"If your version of Windows 7 was set up like mine was, then you need to
get into the sound properties dialog.

"Control Panel > Sound > Playback, and double click on Speakers. Under
the Enhancements tab, have a play around with the Environment and
Equaliser settings until you get a decent sound. I've got a reasonably
decent amplifier/mixer and speakers connected to this computer, and when
I first switched it all on, the sound was absolute crap. It sounded like
it was coming out of the bottom of a dustbin filled with pebbles. It'll
take you some time to get a decent balance from it, but as a guide I use
"Living Room" and "Club" respectively under those settings. Works for
rock and classical really well."

Hey jim, there really is no need to go into all this bother IF you set
it up right in the first place and have nothing crappy along the line,
that is.

And as we only have two ears two speakers should be sufficient to give
you a realistic sound.

And no woofers please IF, that is, you've got a decent pair of speakers,
of course. Those so-called woofers go thump, thump with no detectable
pitch. They drive me mad, they do! Luckily or otherwise I have got a
good pair of ears with perfect pitch. And I can't stand the sound of
supposedly musical notes unless they "speak" to me and I recognize them
in the do, re, mi system.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

And I can't stand the sound of
supposedly musical notes unless they "speak" to me and I recognize them
in the do, re, mi system.

Stay away from Near Eastern, Flamenco, Rom, and Balkan music.

 

[Paul]

Friend got a new, low end win7 desktop.
Using her old Samsung monitor which works fine.
Pair of dinky speakers are not doing well. Are there new drivers for
cheap speakers? Win7 64bit.

TIA

Do the dinky speakers have a power adapter ?

Is there a line cord, that runs into the back of the speaker ?

I have a speaker like the latter, where a power cord runs into
the back of the Right speaker, and provides power for the speakers.
Those are "amplified" speakers, and amplified speakers are the
type most often used with computers. After my stereo blew out,
I've been using these for the last couple years.

http://kasacomputer.com/images/basic/SP-AL-ACS21W.jpg

*******

These are un-amplified speakers. And would sound really really
weak, if connected to the 32 ohm drive available on a computer
Line Out or Headphone plug. To get a decent level from a
passive speaker like this, you need a nice power amplifier, such
as the one in your stereo.

http://vermontelectronics.biz/images/tannoy.jpg

Plus, you likely would have needed a strange adapter, to
get the right kind of wiring.

*******

Also, have you located the "custom control panel" or "mixer"
panel for the sound chip ? I have a tray icon for mine, and
use the panel from that icon all the time, to adjust settings.
Make sure you've got the volume turned up in there.

Paul

 

[choro]

Stay away from Near Eastern, Flamenco, Rom, and Balkan music.

Why?!!!

Incidentally I have an "eclectic" (real posh word, this one!) taste in
music which is just another way of saying I am rather choosy about what
I listen to. In fact my interests are very varied so long as it is good
music.

But in real unamplified live music you don't get those "thumps"! Not
that I mind the growling sound of the wind machine in Thus Spake
Zarathustra by Richard Strauss or the drums in Fanfare for the Common
Man by Aaron Copland. But I like to hear them as musical sounds rather
than the noises generated by some titan blowing his nose or worse!
Luckily I have a system that can reproduce those sounds realistically
without boosting them artificially.

But I also love Johnny Cash as well as that French Sparrow Edith Piaf.
Genuine ethnic music from various lands. Folk music.

Good music is good music unless ruined by cheap puny little $10 speakers
with amps built into them or speakers that go thump, thump!

 

[choro]

Speakers don't require drivers. The driver is already built into each
speaker (it's the magnet& coil).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_driver

You never mentioned to just WHAT these external speakers connect. Could
it be to backpanel connectors in the system case that come from the
motherboard? Well, if so, did this "friend" ever get around to
installing the motherboard's chipset driver package? Since you never
identify the brand and model for the motherboard, you'll have to search
the motherboard or system maker's web site for the chipset drivers.

You never mentioned WHO did the install of Windows 7. Was it this
"friend", you, or a pre-built computer that comes with Windows 7
pre-installed (along with all the other fluff)? If it was
pre-installed, maybe the problem is in configuring the settings for the
audio devices that "are not doing well" - whatever that means.

Don't know what your friend had for their prior hardware. Maybe they
had a daughtercard that had high-level outputs usable with unpowered
external speakers. "not doing well" could be, as just one possible
guess, that the volume is very low. The new mobo's audio connectors
might only be line-out jacks and require you connect *powered* external
speakers to them. Could be the external speakers have their own volume
control and it got turned way down.

Connect a pair of working headphones to the audio jacks in the backpanel
of the system case (which connect to the motherboard). Test the
headphones with some other line-out device, like a portable audio
device, your stereo system's audio out jack, or the audio jack on your
television. Then plug it into the audio jacks on the back of the
computer case. Is the sound "not doing well" with the headphones, too?
If the headphones are low volume then putz with the audio device
properties in Control Panel.

If the "not doing well" is something other than low volume, well, we'll
only know when you tell us what "not doing well" really means.

Why don't you just say that it is the sound cards that need the relevant
software drivers.

May be this chap got trashy sound because he had the wrong driver
installed for his sound card!

You obviously know what you are talking about. But who do you think will
understand what a speaker driver is when you say it is: "magnet & coil"?
Remember you are talking to a layman and you should explain things to
them in layman's terms!

Incidentally a very rich friend of mine has a chauffeur (read "driver")
to drive him round but he doesn't need any software! ;-)
--
choro
*****
PS. I must be in a mischievous mood tonite! And incidentally I never
heard of a sound card pumping enough juice to get speakers going without
the output going first through an amplifier! Unless the speakers are of
the "active" type with the amplifier built in!

 

[TheGunslinger]

Friend got a new, low end win7 desktop.
Using her old Samsung monitor which works fine.
Pair of dinky speakers are not doing well. Are there new drivers for
cheap speakers? Win7 64bit.

TIA

Speakers don't have device drivers, only the soundcard has 'em.

IMHO,

MJR

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Why?!!!

Microtones and non-Western scales galore

 

[VanguardLH]

Why don't you just say that it is the sound cards that need the relevant
software drivers.

We don't know it is a daughter card (sound card) in his host. We don't
know if the backpanel jacks were used which connect to the mobo. We
don't know the hardware. It was never described. No details. Your
GUESSES are as good as mine.

May be this chap got trashy sound because he had the wrong driver
installed for his sound card!

Yep. MAYBE. "not doing well" doesn't tell us anything specific.

You obviously know what you are talking about. But who do you think will
understand what a speaker driver is when you say it is: "magnet & coil"?
Remember you are talking to a layman and you should explain things to
them in layman's terms!

And somehow you just happened to completely miss the link that I
provided that defines what is a speaker and mentions "driver" several
times.

Wow, it was really that difficult to understand my mention of installing
the chipset drivers from the mobo maker? If that's true, and if the OP
is as dumb as you say, they certainly won't be able to retrieve and
install those drivers. They'll have to rely on a local computer shop to
fix their problem or bribe the neighbor's teenage kid with brownies to
fix his host.

I had to GUESS the user is connecting to backpanel jacks that go tot he
motherboard. No details. "search the motherboard or system maker's web
site for the chipset drivers". Yep that was really complicated, uh huh.

Incidentally a very rich friend of mine has a chauffeur (read "driver")
to drive him round but he doesn't need any software! ;-)

Unless congenitally deprived or maimed by accident, I bet this chaffeur
is also a "speaker", too.

 

[choro]

Microtones and non-Western scales galore

Ah! I see. But you've got thousands of shades of green but they are all
still green!

When I still used to fiddle, I used to think that the tuning of the
piano left a lot to be desired. That F#, say, as the leading note in G
Major wasn't quite as sharp as it should have been.

Well, let's just say that temperamental tuning is just what it is:
Temperamental! And no microtones. One size fits all, as they say!

 

[choro]

Nice response. Enjoyed reading it!

But sometimes what goes on out there doesn't bear thinking about.

Anyway, a friend of a friend let his grandchildren on to his laptop and
as a result lost most of the articles he had written for newspapers
which he was hoping eventually put together and publish in book form.
Needless to say the articles were very important to him and also
needless to say that he hadn't backed up anything!

So, what does he do? He calls somebody he knows who is supposed to be a
"wizard" on computers to sort out the problem for him. Of course, they
get nowhere. So I go to his place with my friend and lo and behold, the
computer wizard is there too with the laptop connected to the Internet
and busy downloading updates. Can you imagine that? The chap's lost his
work and there is this "wizard" updating the OS and other software.

Naturally I tell the "wizard" to stop the downloads but my advice goes
in through his one ear and out through the other. After all the chap
still believes FAT 32 is better than this new fangled NTFS claptrap.

No need to say I washed my hands off this matter. And the wizard ended
up installing another OS on the laptop no doubt still hoping to retrieve
the chap's lost user files!.

I'll tell you what. What goes on out there is hard to conceptualize
sometimes.

Like the vacuum cleaner that I found chucked out at the block of flats
where I live. It looked quite new and I thought I'd get it in and have a
look at it. And guess what?! I found out to my amazement that the two
wires had been twisted together and both connected to the live pin of
the plug! This no doubt after this good old lady kept disconnecting the
plug from the wall socket by grabbing the cable and yanking it out
"safely"!

Gave away the perfectly good vacuum cleaner to charity as I had bought
myself a brand new one only a few weeks earlier.

Or here is another one for you to ponder over.

Some chap hooked up an extension cable for the lawn mower and connected
male plugs to both ends of the cable. And when he found out that the
mower actually also had a male plug he replaced it with a female plug.

Now, nothing "wrong" with that. The mower would still work after all I
guess but his even brighter wife connected the extension cable to the
mains and then went out into the garden and grabbed the male plug at the
other end, pins and all. Needless to say she got the shock of her life!

Life is funny sometimes!

 

[LouB]

Speakers don't have drivers. If the speakers are unpowered, then the
audio card can't supply enough wattage to drive them, time to spend
another $10

Thanks

 

[LouB]

Do the dinky speakers have a power adapter ?

Is there a line cord, that runs into the back of the speaker ?

I have a speaker like the latter, where a power cord runs into
the back of the Right speaker, and provides power for the speakers.
Those are "amplified" speakers, and amplified speakers are the
type most often used with computers. After my stereo blew out,
I've been using these for the last couple years.

http://kasacomputer.com/images/basic/SP-AL-ACS21W.jpg

*******

These are un-amplified speakers. And would sound really really
weak, if connected to the 32 ohm drive available on a computer
Line Out or Headphone plug. To get a decent level from a
passive speaker like this, you need a nice power amplifier, such
as the one in your stereo.

http://vermontelectronics.biz/images/tannoy.jpg

Plus, you likely would have needed a strange adapter, to
get the right kind of wiring.

*******

Also, have you located the "custom control panel" or "mixer"
panel for the sound chip ? I have a tray icon for mine, and
use the panel from that icon all the time, to adjust settings.
Make sure you've got the volume turned up in there.

Paul

Thanks. Will check.

 

[Ken Blake]

Speakers don't have device drivers, only the soundcard has 'em.

What you say is usually correct. However, note that there are some
speakers that don't connect to sound cards, but plug directly into USB
ports. Those kinds of speakers *do* have device drivers.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Ah! I see. But you've got thousands of shades of green but they are all
still green!

When I still used to fiddle, I used to think that the tuning of the
piano left a lot to be desired. That F#, say, as the leading note in G
Major wasn't quite as sharp as it should have been.

Well, let's just say that temperamental tuning is just what it is:
Temperamental! And no microtones. One size fits all, as they say!

There's an instrument (in Egypt, I think), called kanun, that looks a
little like a small hammer dulcimer, i.e., a bit like a piano w/o a
keyboard, where you play directly on the strings (by plucking, not
hammering, IIRC). It contains levers near the end of each string so you
can retune each string up or down by a quarter tone as needed.

As for whether it's true-tempered, I don't know, but probably not. I
didn't get close enough to look for that much detail. Although maybe the
levers mentioned above can also be used to implement the much smaller
corrections needed for true tempering.

I'm told that string players play the notes differently depending on
whether they're playing with well-tempered instruments, as in an
orchestra or with a piano, versus, say, a string quartet. In truth,
though, I don't fret much about the difference.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Some chap hooked up an extension cable for the lawn mower and connected
male plugs to both ends of the cable. And when he found out that the
mower actually also had a male plug he replaced it with a female plug.

On a recent trip to Home Despot I was looking for an unusual extension
cord for use with a Christmas tree. I had a nice chat with a sales
associate, who told me that one of the running jokes in that department
is to ask each other how many people tried to buy a male to male
extension cord in the last month. He said the number is rarely zero...

Sadly, they can't prevent people from making one.

He said the usual reason seems to be that people put up Christmas
decorations or other electrical items, and when finished realize that
the male plug is at the far end and the female extender plug is at the
near end. And who's going to reverse that cord? Not them!

 

[Kenny]

According to Johnny Cash there's only forty shades of green?

Kenny