Digital audio

In all the years I've been working on computers I've never dealt with
digital audio and now I've seen the same problem twice this month.


One machine runs Vista and the person uses it just to run some specific
hardware and the other is a run of the mill Win7 machine.


In both cases, the users decided after going for years with no speakers
they now want sound...and analog speakers do not work


In both machines digital audio is available but there is analog.


How they heck would I get analog enabled, there seems to be zero option?


Alternatively if I can't get analog enabled, is there a cheap digital
speaker available anywhere?


I am not an audio-type person so don't deal much with sound.

philo wrote:
In all the years I've been working on computers I've never dealt with
digital audio and now I've seen the same problem twice this month.

One machine runs Vista and the person uses it just to run some specific
hardware and the other is a run of the mill Win7 machine.

In both cases, the users decided after going for years with no speakers
they now want sound...and analog speakers do not work

In both machines digital audio is available but there is analog.

How they heck would I get analog enabled, there seems to be zero option?

Alternatively if I can't get analog enabled, is there a cheap digital
speaker available anywhere?

I am not an audio-type person so don't deal much with sound.

It's like any other hardware. Use devmgmt.msc (Device Manager) to
check the inventory of items.

Audio chips sit on PCI bus, PCI Express bus, AC'97, or HDAudio. You
are probably dealing with HDAudio. In WinXP SP2 era, you had to install
UAA (Microsoft) driver first, before the hardware driver. For the new OSes you
are dealing with, just the hardware manufacturer driver is needed.

Actual digital audio exists in several forms:

1) Digital microphones. These are I2C or something. Nobody has these.
They're a figment of the imagination. I see mention of them, but no
examples. Most microphones now are electret analog. That's just
to step over the potential for "digital" on input...

2) OK, speakers. There is SPDIF. It can exist on the motherboard as a
logic level signal (1x4 header). It should properly be transformer isolated,
1 volt amplitude, and connected to a coax cable (75 ohms?). The connector
style was RCA-Cinch. It works at 6MHz and carries maybe 24 bit stereo sound
at one of the standard computer audio rates. The transformer isolation step,
solves the ground loop issue with your home theater "receiver" input.

A second option is called TOSLink. It's a red LED, transmitter costs a
buck. On some retail motherboards, you see an RCA Cinch connector
(for SPDIF coax) as well as a TOSLink optical connector that takes
multimode "plastic dental fiber optics".

On a few laptops, the headphone jack is dual mode. If you look in the
barrel of the connector, you see red light. That's TOSLink. Yet, the same
hole takes a 1/8" analog stereo plug. You won't run into that all too often.
If you see a weird source of red light, that's what it is.

On retail motherboards, the TOSLink connector (fiber optics) may be covered
with a cap that keeps dust out of the connector.

3) Another form of digital audio, is audio-over-HDMI. This is used with
Home Theater setups, or with one of the monitors that has speakers
embedded in the monitor. The video card company provides an audio driver
specially for the purpose. On older video cards, you could run a cable
from the SPDIF header, to the two-pin on the top of the video card, and
that's where the audio-over-HDMI came from. No driver needed on the video
card at least, in that case. Really old video cards, could have no
audio-over-HDMI capability whatsoever. Those cards are little better
than DVI-to-HDMI contraptions.

*******

1) Check Device Manager. Look for an audio brand name in there.
Check "Programs and Features" control panel for a Realtek or similar driver.
Look for an "Unknown Item", implying a driver is missing.
You know the drill...

2) For some reason, the RealTek panel doesn't install properly on systems here,
and I run the EXE from the Program Files folder when I need it.

3) The OSes tend to have an audio icon in the lower right corner of the screen.
This gives access to "generic" driver solutions that may already be
providing working sound. However, if you have RealTek HDAudio, and you
download the driver from the RealTek site, you end up with a Program Files
folder with a real honest to goodness RealTek Control Panel. In there you
can set special effects (concert hall echo, Dolby DTS, other goofy stuff).

The Windows icon has "Record", "Playback", and in there, you can select
a "Default" device to receive sound. I have a better picture with more
dialog boxes in it somewhere, but this is all I can find right now.
This picture is demonstrating to someone, how to set the panel for
audio-over-HDMI (by making that option the Default).

https://s32.postimg.org/yy8qps8w5/speakers.jpg

The System Mixer in the audio subsystem, drives one output at a time.
However, programs like WinAMP bypass the mixer, and as a result, they
can drive multiple sound cards at the same time. You lose the benefits
of the mixer, but gain the ability to drive audio throughout the house.
Each program writer has to implement the (non-Mixer) details themselves.

Paul

On 03/31/2017 03:48 PM, Paul wrote:
philo wrote:
In all the years I've been working on computers I've never dealt with
digital audio and now I've seen the same problem twice this month.

One machine runs Vista and the person uses it just to run some
specific hardware and the other is a run of the mill Win7 machine.

In both cases, the users decided after going for years with no
speakers they now want sound...and analog speakers do not work

In both machines digital audio is available but there is analog.

How they heck would I get analog enabled, there seems to be zero option?

Alternatively if I can't get analog enabled, is there a cheap digital
speaker available anywhere?

I am not an audio-type person so don't deal much with sound.

It's like any other hardware. Use devmgmt.msc (Device Manager) to
check the inventory of items.

Audio chips sit on PCI bus, PCI Express bus, AC'97, or HDAudio. You
are probably dealing with HDAudio. In WinXP SP2 era, you had to install
UAA (Microsoft) driver first, before the hardware driver. For the new
OSes you
are dealing with, just the hardware manufacturer driver is needed.

Actual digital audio exists in several forms:

1) Digital microphones. These are I2C or something. Nobody has these.
They're a figment of the imagination. I see mention of them, but no
examples. Most microphones now are electret analog. That's just
to step over the potential for "digital" on input...

2) OK, speakers. There is SPDIF. It can exist on the motherboard as a
logic level signal (1x4 header). It should properly be transformer
isolated,
1 volt amplitude, and connected to a coax cable (75 ohms?). The
connector
style was RCA-Cinch. It works at 6MHz and carries maybe 24 bit stereo
sound
at one of the standard computer audio rates. The transformer
isolation step,
solves the ground loop issue with your home theater "receiver" input.

A second option is called TOSLink. It's a red LED, transmitter costs a
buck. On some retail motherboards, you see an RCA Cinch connector
(for SPDIF coax) as well as a TOSLink optical connector that takes
multimode "plastic dental fiber optics".

On a few laptops, the headphone jack is dual mode. If you look in the
barrel of the connector, you see red light. That's TOSLink. Yet, the
same
hole takes a 1/8" analog stereo plug. You won't run into that all too
often.
If you see a weird source of red light, that's what it is.

On retail motherboards, the TOSLink connector (fiber optics) may be
covered
with a cap that keeps dust out of the connector.

3) Another form of digital audio, is audio-over-HDMI. This is used with
Home Theater setups, or with one of the monitors that has speakers
embedded in the monitor. The video card company provides an audio driver
specially for the purpose. On older video cards, you could run a cable
from the SPDIF header, to the two-pin on the top of the video card, and
that's where the audio-over-HDMI came from. No driver needed on the
video
card at least, in that case. Really old video cards, could have no
audio-over-HDMI capability whatsoever. Those cards are little better
than DVI-to-HDMI contraptions.

*******

1) Check Device Manager. Look for an audio brand name in there.
Check "Programs and Features" control panel for a Realtek or similar
driver.
Look for an "Unknown Item", implying a driver is missing.
You know the drill...

2) For some reason, the RealTek panel doesn't install properly on
systems here,
and I run the EXE from the Program Files folder when I need it.

3) The OSes tend to have an audio icon in the lower right corner of the
screen.
This gives access to "generic" driver solutions that may already be
providing working sound. However, if you have RealTek HDAudio, and you
download the driver from the RealTek site, you end up with a Program
Files
folder with a real honest to goodness RealTek Control Panel. In there
you
can set special effects (concert hall echo, Dolby DTS, other goofy
stuff).

The Windows icon has "Record", "Playback", and in there, you can select
a "Default" device to receive sound. I have a better picture with more
dialog boxes in it somewhere, but this is all I can find right now.
This picture is demonstrating to someone, how to set the panel for
audio-over-HDMI (by making that option the Default).

https://s32.postimg.org/yy8qps8w5/speakers.jpg

The System Mixer in the audio subsystem, drives one output at a time.
However, programs like WinAMP bypass the mixer, and as a result, they
can drive multiple sound cards at the same time. You lose the benefits
of the mixer, but gain the ability to drive audio throughout the house.
Each program writer has to implement the (non-Mixer) details themselves.

Paul



Will find out more tomorrow

thanks