Audigy 2 ZS line out failure - how to fix?

I have a Dell Dimension 8400 WinXP system with an Audigy2 ZS sound
card. One of the line outs (the second of the three) has suddenly
failed. How can I pinpoint the cause of the failure, and will I need
to purchase a new soundcard?

The exact port that failed is the fifth hole on the back of the card,
if one is counting from the left on a pic such as the one at
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/...-zs/index.html. It
is the middle one of the three line outs.

Thanks in advance.

On Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:02:40 GMT, LineOut wrote:

I have a Dell Dimension 8400 WinXP system with an Audigy2 ZS sound
card. One of the line outs (the second of the three) has suddenly
failed. How can I pinpoint the cause of the failure, and will I need
to purchase a new soundcard?

The exact port that failed is the fifth hole on the back of the card,
if one is counting from the left on a pic such as the one at
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/...-zs/index.html. It
is the middle one of the three line outs.

Thanks in advance.

One more bit of information: two of the three line outs have failed,
not just one. The two that have failed are the fifth and sixth holes
on the back of the card, if one is counting from the left on a pic
such as the one at
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/...-zs/index.html.

On Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:02:40 GMT, LineOut wrote:

I have a Dell Dimension 8400 WinXP system with an Audigy2 ZS sound
card. One of the line outs (the second of the three) has suddenly
failed. How can I pinpoint the cause of the failure, and will I need
to purchase a new soundcard?

The exact port that failed is the fifth hole on the back of the card,
if one is counting from the left on a pic such as the one at
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/...-zs/index.html. It
is the middle one of the three line outs.

Thanks in advance.

I have no experience with this card, but I have seen cases where the
jacks get flaky. I'd suspect that first, rather than any dead
electronics (which wouldn't be repairable anyway). Try wiggling the
plug side-to-side and in-and-out while listening to that output.
Sometimes the problem is simply that the plug is too small for the
jack. (Despite the fact that these are supposed to be "standard"
sizes, they do vary.) If that's the case, swapping cables for one
with slightly fatter plugs may be all you need. Of course, this
presumes you have a collection of assorted cables on hand to try,
since you probably can't go into your local parts shop with a
micrometer and rip open blister packs.

If you do find a bad jack (not just a plug size mismatch) you can have
a look at the board after removing it from your system. It's possible
that the jack just didn't get soldered properly and you may be able to
re-solder it. BE CAREFUL! Typically these melt quite easily, so if
you hold the iron too long on a terminal, it can heat it up enough to
melt the plastic and really mis-align things.

If you actually have to replace the jack, you will probably need
desoldering tools to suck the old solder out of the holes. If you
heat each pin while prying on the jack, you can sometimes "worry" it
out by moving each pin a teensy bit in a round-robin manner.
Sometimes this comes out clean enough to re-insert a new jack, but
don't bet on it.

Best regards,


Bob Masta

DAQARTA v3.50
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
www.daqarta.com
Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, FREE Signal Generator
Science with your sound card!

On Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:34:17 GMT, (Bob Masta)
wrote:

On Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:02:40 GMT, LineOut wrote:

I have a Dell Dimension 8400 WinXP system with an Audigy2 ZS sound
card. One of the line outs (the second of the three) has suddenly
failed. How can I pinpoint the cause of the failure, and will I need
to purchase a new soundcard?

The exact port that failed is the fifth hole on the back of the card,
if one is counting from the left on a pic such as the one at
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/...-zs/index.html. It
is the middle one of the three line outs.

Thanks in advance.

I have no experience with this card, but I have seen cases where the
jacks get flaky. I'd suspect that first, rather than any dead
electronics (which wouldn't be repairable anyway). Try wiggling the
plug side-to-side and in-and-out while listening to that output.
Sometimes the problem is simply that the plug is too small for the
jack. (Despite the fact that these are supposed to be "standard"
sizes, they do vary.) If that's the case, swapping cables for one
with slightly fatter plugs may be all you need. Of course, this
presumes you have a collection of assorted cables on hand to try,
since you probably can't go into your local parts shop with a
micrometer and rip open blister packs.

If you do find a bad jack (not just a plug size mismatch) you can have
a look at the board after removing it from your system. It's possible
that the jack just didn't get soldered properly and you may be able to
re-solder it. BE CAREFUL! Typically these melt quite easily, so if
you hold the iron too long on a terminal, it can heat it up enough to
melt the plastic and really mis-align things.

If you actually have to replace the jack, you will probably need
desoldering tools to suck the old solder out of the holes. If you
heat each pin while prying on the jack, you can sometimes "worry" it
out by moving each pin a teensy bit in a round-robin manner.
Sometimes this comes out clean enough to re-insert a new jack, but
don't bet on it.

Best regards,


Bob Masta

DAQARTA v3.50
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
www.daqarta.com
Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, FREE Signal Generator
Science with your sound card!

Thanks for the suggestions. Here's some new info that might help solve
this frustrating problem. I bought a new sound card, an Audigy 2 (not
ZS) and installed it. It installed fine, according to Windows, but it
had exactly the same problem that my original sound card had, i.e.,
two of the three line outs will not work. So, I removed the new card,
replaced my original card back into my computer, made sure that the
Audigy 2 ZS had the most recent drivers, and the prob persists.

And a plug-in that I use for recording in Cubase, Ivory (acoustic
piano), that normally produces a beautiful realistic piano sound, now
sounds terribly distorted. I suspect that the sound card problem and
the Ivory problem are related, since they both deal with audio and
they both failed at the same time. Confusingly, other plug-in's (bass
guitar, etc.) do not sound distorted.

Any idea what is going on here, and a fix for it? TIA.