Hi all,

I blew my laptop sound card somehow. Not sure why it blew, but it was
working fine until I plugged a mic pre-amp into its mic socket to
record some voice. Strange thing is, I have done this before many many
times with the same settings, input mic, voltage supply, and its never
complained before. This time however, it's blown it, it seems. And
it's not a separate board, but built into the motherboard.

Obviously a re-boot hasn't solved the problem. Neither did trying to
play audio via Linux instead of Windows. So it has to be a hardware
failure. But the symptoms are not normal. If it had been a case that I
had whacked too much power into the input, I would expect the initial
amplifier stage to fail resulting in mostly just very low output audio
levels. But what I get is more like I blew the speakers on a home
stereo by turning up the volume far too loud. It sounds really raspy
like the speaker coils have partly decatched from their cones! Tried
using known-good earphones from the earphone socket, but the result is
the same.

I am gonna have to trash this lappie if someone here can't think of
something I might have overlooked. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

VLC.

On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:14:34 -0700 (PDT), phaedrus
wrote:

I blew my laptop sound card somehow.
it's not a separate board, but built into the motherboard.

I am gonna have to trash this lappie if someone here can't think of
something I might have overlooked. Any suggestions?

Just connect a USB sound device ?

--
Kind regards,
Gerard Bok

On Oct 20, 2:14*pm, phaedrus wrote:
Hi all,

I blew my laptop sound card somehow. Not sure why it blew, but it was
working fine until I plugged a mic pre-amp into its mic socket to
record some voice. Strange thing is, I have done this before many many
times with the same settings, input mic, voltage supply, and its never
complained before. This time however, it's blown it, it seems. And
it's not a separate board, but built into the motherboard.

Obviously a re-boot hasn't solved the problem. Neither did trying to
play audio via Linux instead of Windows. So it has to be a hardware
failure. But the symptoms are not normal. If it had been a case that I
had whacked too much power into the input, I would expect the initial
amplifier stage to fail resulting in mostly just very low output audio
levels. But what I get is more like I blew the speakers on a home
stereo by turning up the volume far too loud. It sounds really raspy
like the speaker coils have partly decatched from their cones! Tried
using known-good earphones from the earphone socket, but the result is
the same.

I am gonna have to trash this lappie if someone here can't think of
something I might have overlooked. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

VLC.

I did something similar with the on-board sound of a desktop a couple
of years back. For that we used a separate sound card as repairing the
mother board isn't practical. Gerard's suggestion is your best bet.
When connecting external items to a PC (or laptop) it's a real good
idea to connect the audio BEFORE connecting the power cord.

Your PC is likely grounded via the 3rd pin on the plug but many audio
items use a simple 2 wire plug and sometimes 'loosely' couple the
signal ground to the power source which can potentially put over 100
volts between 'grounds'. If that connects to an audio (or video) pin
_before_ the ground connects it WILL fail.

G²

On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:14:34 -0700, phaedrus wrote:

Hi all,

I blew my laptop sound card somehow. Not sure why it blew, but it was
working fine until I plugged a mic pre-amp into its mic socket to record
some voice. Strange thing is, I have done this before many many times
with the same settings, input mic, voltage supply, and its never
complained before. This time however, it's blown it, it seems. And it's
not a separate board, but built into the motherboard.

Could have been static electricity.

Look for a USB sound card.



--
Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:14:34 -0700 (PDT), phaedrus
wrote:

I am gonna have to trash this lappie if someone here can't think of
something I might have overlooked.

The maker and model number perhaps?

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

phaedrus Inscribed thus:

Hi all,

I blew my laptop sound card somehow. Not sure why it blew, but it was
working fine until I plugged a mic pre-amp into its mic socket to
record some voice. Strange thing is, I have done this before many many
times with the same settings, input mic, voltage supply, and its never
complained before. This time however, it's blown it, it seems. And
it's not a separate board, but built into the motherboard.

Obviously a re-boot hasn't solved the problem. Neither did trying to
play audio via Linux instead of Windows. So it has to be a hardware
failure. But the symptoms are not normal. If it had been a case that I
had whacked too much power into the input, I would expect the initial
amplifier stage to fail resulting in mostly just very low output audio
levels. But what I get is more like I blew the speakers on a home
stereo by turning up the volume far too loud. It sounds really raspy
like the speaker coils have partly decatched from their cones! Tried
using known-good earphones from the earphone socket, but the result is
the same.

I am gonna have to trash this lappie if someone here can't think of
something I might have overlooked. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

VLC.

If it affects both channels it might be a bad ground on the output jack.

--
Best Regards:
Baron.

On 21 Okt., 20:19, Baron wrote:

If it affects both channels it might be a bad ground on the output jack.

--
Best Regards:
* * * * * * * * * * *Baron.


Well I did wonder if it could be caused by physical damage to the
ouput jack.

Thanks, everyone for the suggestions. I hadn't thought about a usb
card but will investigate.

To answer Jeff, the laptop is a Fujitsu-Siemens Esprimo V5535. It's
been a damn good workhorse and I really don't want to trash it if I
possibly fix it up.

Best wishes, all.

On 21 Okt., 20:19, Baron wrote:

If it affects both channels it might be a bad ground on the output jack.

--
Best Regards:
* * * * * * * * * * *Baron.


Well I did wonder if it could be caused by physical damage to the
ouput jack.

Thanks, everyone for the suggestions. I hadn't thought about a usb
card but will investigate.

To answer Jeff, the laptop is a Fujitsu-Siemens Esprimo V5535. It's
been a damn good workhorse and I really don't want to trash it if I
possibly fix it up.

Best wishes, all.