A Lack of Sound

[kerravonsen]

So I was on my computer, as one is, and I started playing music, as one does, and there was nothing.

1. Was it the speakers or the soundcard?
2. Confusion continued because trying to test things with the mpg123 command led to... nothing happening.
3. Wasn't there supposed to be a progress meter?
4. So I log in to the laptop, and there was a progress meter, but no sound coming from the laptop. Was that right?
5. Then I log in to the graphics computer, and lo, there was a progress meter and sound coming from the computer in the other room. Okay.
6. Call a script to check which sound-cards the system knows about. There are two which appear to be live: the built-in soundcard, and the Creative soundcard, which is what the speakers are plugged into. Okay.
7. Need to find another set of speakers to test the soundcards. Oh, look, there's one over there.
8. Oh. They need power, and the power plug is nowhere to be found. Oh well, I guess I'll throw these ones out then.
9. Okay, I can unplug the speakers from the graphics computer. They connect via USB, so power is not a problem.
10. And no matter what USB port I plug the speakers into, I get nothing but error messages about the USB device not being recognised.
11. And while I was plugging a cord into every USB port on the computer, I noticed that the keyboard was plugged into a USB hub rather than directly to the computer, even though the cord was long enough to reach the back of the computer, and wouldn't that be better?
    • Apparently not. Every single USB port at the back of the computer did not enable the keyboard to work.
    • Maybe they were like USB 1.1 rather than USB 2.0? This is not a new computer. Or they were just crap.
    • At least this explained why the keyboard was plugged into the USB hub, and indeed, why I had a USB hub in the first place.
12. Accidentally unplugged one of the USB drives while I was dealing with the keyboard. Oops. Reboot and fsck.
13. Had a couple of reboot cycles wondering why the keyboard wasn't working, then remembered that the USB hub has a power-on button which automatically defaults to "off" when the computer is rebooted, so I have to remember to press the button in that period where power is on but the computer hasn't yet finished booting.
14. Back to the speakers from the other computer. Fortunately, I remembered that these particular speakers had the option of working via standard sound-plug (and just use the USB for power), and also, fortunately, that cord had not gone missing and was where I thought it was.
15. A few more tries, and this speaker was working, plugged into the Creative soundcard. Though it was difficult for the cord to reach that soundcard, just a matter of six inches, but still annoying.
16. So, the old speakers are dead. They had a good LONG run, seriously, those speakers were from last century! The only set of computer speakers I've seen which had a bass speaker as well as two normal stereo speakers. They were nice. I mean, yes, nowadays, one can go whole surround-sound, but that's far too much effort to set up for me to want to bother with. Rest in pieces, speakers.
17. So after unplugging and disentangling the old speakers and putting them aside, pushing the desk back to where it ought to be, boot again... and the new speakers stopped working. ARGH!
18. Turned out that that six inches was significant; the new speakers had come unplugged.
19. So the new speakers are now plugged in to the (presumably inferior) built-in soundcard because the cord will reach it without being unplugged (and without having to put the speakers six inches to the left on top of the USB hub, making the USB hub inaccessible).
    • Given that these speakers are inferior to my old speakers, I doubt I could tell the difference between one soundcard and the other one.
    • In order to sit just under my monitor rather than right up against my keyboard, these speakers are resting partly on the monitor stand, and partly on... a flat smooth river stone which has been sitting on my desk for aesthetic purposes. Now it has practical and aesthetic purposes! (Still aesthetic purposes, because you can see the stone peeking out from under the speakers. All very Zen.)
20. So my everyday computer now has sound, and my graphics computer technically still has sound, because it can connect to the stereo system via bluetooth.
    • But that is intended to be used when I'm NOT sitting at the computer, but when I'm working away from the computer, in the lounge or the kitchen. Which means that the sound is far too loud and unbalanced when I'm sitting at the graphics computer. That is an annoyance to have to manually re-adjust the stereo whenever I move from one spot to another.

So I'm probably going to need to get new speakers. Whether they will be new speakers for the graphics computer, or whether I will put back the speakers where they came from and instead get new speakers for the everyday computer, I don't know. I'm not a sound-nerd. My late cousin would be appalled by my lack of concern with sound quality. He was the kind of person who built their own speakers.

I'd ask for recommendations, except that I expect that everything that people suggest will be things I can't get in Australia.

P.S. I tried posting this by email, but it seems that my ISP is declaring me "unauthorised" to send email via their mail server.

    550 Relay Denied - Unauthorized

The strange thing is that I'm still receiving email, I just can't send it. This is clearly another saga in the making but I am NOT going to deal with it now. I haven't even had breakfast, and it's lunchtime!