No Sound Revisited

Topic

New Reply

I’m back with this issue again. To repeat, I have a Dell Studio XPS 8100 with 1TB hdd, 8GB ram and a Dell ST2410 HD monitor. I had thought that since the monitor took the HDMI cable that it had speakers in it. Turns out that it did not. But it does have input and output jacks so that the speakers can be connected to it. I bought some nice Logitech speakers, plugged them in, connected the jack to the input on the monitor and got NOTHING. Wnidows says that the speakers are “Unplugged” I am at a loss. Everything appears to be right, but still no sound. Control panel/Sounds is where it says they are unplugged, and I cannot figure out what to do next. If I can’t use the monitor input why did I bother with the HDMI cable? I really don’t want to crawl under the desk to plug them into the back of the pc if I have a digital connetion right on top. what am I missing? I have been using fixing and building computers for over 20 years now so I am not new to this, yet I AM at a loss. Any ideas or help much appreciated! Happy New Year to ALL!!!!!!!!!

Joel

Reply | Quote

Replies

What are you connecting that wire to on the PC? I looked at the list of ports for your system at http://www.dell.com/us/p/studio-xps-8100/pd and it does not mention an HDMI port. So what is on the other end of that HDMI wire?

If the other end is connected to the video card, I doubt that the video card would provide sound output.

Reply | Quote

Widows 7 audio is not nearly as straightforward as it is in XP, but as far as HDMI goes, you do not use “speakers.” The normal thing with HDMI is that it just passes along the signal like Line In and its up to the recieving device to control the sound through its speakers.
In the sound window under Playback you probably have Speakers (not plugged in), Headphones (same), a Digital Audio and then you should have for the HDMI, one or more HDMI audio format outputs. If not then you probably don’t have it installed. If you are using an HDMI graphics card, it should be part of that install.

If HDMI audio output is there, that is what you would use rather than Speaker, and also check to see if there is a monitor setting to enable and control the level of audio if it is not pure pass thru.

Reply | Quote

The speakers should be connected to the output jack not the input jack. The input jack should be connected to the speaker output on your pc.
Hope this helps

Reply | Quote

Thank you! I may not be clear enough as the two posts here are somewhat contradictory. The first makes no sense to me, the second does. I suppose the question is this; since the hdmi cable IS connected to the video card, do I still have to connect the speaker cable to the pc itself? Or should it plug into the monitor input/output and work? There is an option in the monitor menu to enable the hdmi, which I did, I jsut cannot for the life of me figure out where to plug that speaker cable in (other than the back of the pc of course) and get sound. I guess Im going to have to give up and just plug the speakers in to the back of the pc and call the $$ spent on the hdmi cable a “Learning expense” I really thought that first, the monitor DID have speakers in it, (or why the hdmi?) then why it has the i/o plugs on it if they won’t take the speaker cable and make it work. I hope I am being clear enough now, I don’t mean to cause a problem, I am just confused. As I have said, I am far from new at this, but Windows 7 is very different, and I will admit that I have not spent the time learning all that I should have but hey, I got a new pc for myself and just unpacked it and put it together, expecting that I would make it work as I always have. Oh well, back to “learning mode” I suppose. Thank you for any and all help and suggestions!

Joel

Reply | Quote

If you have an i3 or i5 CPU see the end of this post – How to update Intel drivers automatically | Ed Bott’s Windows Expertise[/url].

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

I suppose the question is this; since the hdmi cable IS connected to the video card, do I still have to connect the speaker cable to the pc itself? Or should it plug into the monitor input/output and work? There is an option in the monitor menu to enable the hdmi, which I did

No you would not connect to the PC, unless you were not using HDMI sound, then it would be speaker output from the perspective of the computer settings, not HDMI audio output. Sounds like you did the right thing to enable HDMI audio, do you see it now in the Sound control panel?

I really thought that first, the monitor DID have speakers in it, (or why the hdmi?) then why it has the i/o plugs on it if they won’t take the speaker cable and make it work. I hope I am being clear enough now

I think I understood from the start, I have 5 different computers using HDMI connections and 4 of those are using HDMI audio out, so I’ve been through the whole “why doesn’t this work route several times . The real problem may be that you say there are no speakers native to the monitor so it relies on pass thru to speaker jacks. The hardware required to take the HDMI digital audio signal and convert it to analog and send it out the speaker jacks may not exist on that monitor. It does seem screwy that there would be HDMI with no option to get sound from it once it arrives at the monitor, but that’s exactly what happens in some cases.
All of my connections go to HDTVs with built in speakers, so they of course have the hardware built in and know exactly what to do with the HDMI audio once its received.

That’s why I said to check the monitor audio settings for any indication of some control or passthru option, but if there isn’t anything, chances are its not supported.

Reply | Quote