Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler computer speaker problems

So, I helped my dad hook up his new computer the other day and ran into a problem.

He bought an inspiron 530 desktop from dell. The tower has output jacks for 7.1 audio. I hooked up the two speakers that came with the computer(crappy dell speakers) by hooking up the two supplied speakers to the front speaker jack (standard green one) and everything worked fine.

They sounded like crap so we wanted to hook up his old speakers instead. However, When I tried to hook up his boston acoustic computer speakers nothing would play. These are the type that have a powered sub that connects to the computer, and then the two front speakers are wired into the sub. He says the speakers worked fine on his old computer, but we were unable to try that out since his old computer is broken.

Does anyone have an idea of what might be going on here? The only thing I can think of is that he has a separate output jack on his tower for a sub now, but the sub is actually hooked into the front speaker slot. I tried plugging the sub cable into all of the slots of the tower. The L/R front speakers can not plug directly into the tower b/c they have a different connection.

probably just bad computer speakers?

The sub is also the amp for the speakers so make sure the sub is connected to the computer, not the speakers.

This may help too.
http://www.axiomaudio.com/audiobytecomputerspeakers.html

Plugged in?

Yeah, the sub is hooked to the tower and the speakers to the sub. The sub is also plugged into the ac outlet for power. Apparently the speakers worked before but now they don't.... hmmmm.

Looks like they did not survive the swap... or that "before" is a stand-in term for "it worked at some point in the past"!

Keyboard "Mute" button?

The other speakers work fine so nothing is muted.

I will just have to try hooking up the speakers to another computer and see if it works.

First, try the speakers on something like an iPod. Just to make sure they work.

Then, if you're plugging into the back of the PC, make sure you plug into the audio output jack. Usually there's also an audio input jack right next to it. That got me a lot in the past.