System Trouble shooting


I use a Macbook as my source. I could not get sound from my right speaker channel. After going through the whole chain trying figure out where the problem was, I determined it was at the computer. Okay, my preamp which houses my USB DAC has a headphone out so I tried it with headphones. Both channels work fine. If I use other sources like a tv or dvd player, everything works fine. The strange thing is how come my Macbook as a source seems to work with headphones, but when I send the signal to my speakers the right channel does not work? For the record, I swapped USB cords and same result, no sound from the right speaker.
128x128kclone
If you heard sound, then your audio card is fine. Maybe it's just a speaker issue. Maybe you need to replace it.
If your MacBook is working with headphones (from a separate output of mini-DIN/similar type I am guessing) that means your sound card is probably doing fine. You may have a problem for USB output only. There is one other simple potential explanation...

One common mistake is that people sometimes have their L/R output balance set wrong....check you Audio Settings in MacOS, you may find, like the WindowsXP/Vista equivalent, that there is a balance L/R slider that is set to output sound only to your Left speaker channel. On Windows this slider can be moved inadvertently with a mouse-drag or keyboard shortcut. You may want to check this before anything else

In the event the above is not the problem, you may have a bad right channel output when using USB only in which case I'd suggest taking the laptop to a certified Apple repair technician and having them test it...

Write me an email if you want to talk about this further...