The first thing you need to think about when having sound issues is where the problem is coming from: is there absolutely nothing heard or is it just a game or an app. ? Is sound enabled in Windows? Are you choosing the right device? Windows cannot detect your audio device? Let’s see what you can do.
PC’s “obvious” sound problems
On this site we already have several tutorials to teach you what to do when you have problems with the speakers or headphones, but we are going to go over what can happen when your PC does not reproduce any sound. and, for that, nothing better than to start by asking obvious questions that you may have missed:
- Are the speakers or headphones turned on?
- Windows volume, is it muted?
- What about the volume of the speakers or the headphones themselves?
- Is the audio device plugged in where it should be?
Obviously you need to check that the audio device (speakers or headphones) is turned on and that the volume is not at minimum or muted, this is something obvious and we are not going to explain anything. However, when it comes to analog speakers or headphones, you have to be careful where you connect them as sometimes it is easy not to get it where you want it to be. In the diagram above, you can see the typical audio outputs of a motherboard with an integrated sound card; Your headphones or stereo speakers should be connected to the green mini jack, although the speaker system is 5.1 you will also use orange, black and gray, but in this case each connector will have a color so that you do not make a mistake.
It is also possible that if you had a headset plugged into the front panel of your box, the problem is either that it does not work well or that it is not properly connected. You need to internally verify that the HD Audio connector on the box is plugged into place on the motherboard.
Finally, the other obvious problem may be that you have no sound on the PC because the correct audio device is not selected, and it frequently happens that after updating the drivers of the graphics card, this default device is changed. Checking it is very simple, just click on the speaker icon in the start bar (bottom right, next to the clock) and click on the white triangle pointing up to expand the options.
Here you need to check that the selected device is the one you want to use and not another. As we said, it is common and especially if your monitor has speakers that after updating the graphics card drivers that default device changes and that is the reason why you don’t hear nothing on the PC.
Audio driver issues
You may also be having issues with the motherboard internal sound card drivers, and you will know there is a problem with this if the speaker icon we just mentioned appears with a red cross as if to make us understand that no audio device is connected. If this is the case, you have to go to the device manager (right click on the Start button -> Device manager) and under the Audio inputs and outputs menu, you have to search for your device.
If any of the devices appear with a red X or yellow exclamation mark, you are probably having driver issues. Right click on the device and click Update Driver, then select the first option: “Automatically search for drivers”.
If this does not solve your problems, come back to the same place and right clicking instead of selecting the Update driver option, select the Uninstall device option and then restart the system; Windows will search for and install the driver automatically.
How to improve sound in Windows 10
Microsoft’s operating system has many improvements that can dramatically improve sound quality (and fix issues) in Windows, so let’s see what they can do. To get started, right click on the speaker icon mentioned above and select the “Sounds” option, then go to the Playback tab.
Double click on the audio device you want to change and in the window that opens go to the Enhancements tab (for some reason even if you have Windows in Spanish this part appears in English but you have to assume that in some cases point to it. They’ll call improvements or something like that.)
Here you can find several improvements:
- Low frequency protection– This option allows the system to enhance quiet sounds when a subwoofer is not installed and is useful if you experience sound spray problems.
- Virtual surround: surely with its name you already suppose what it is; creates a virtual audio environment, although with speakers it doesn’t work very well with headphones.
- Correction of the part: This option automatically calculates the optimum delay, frequency response and gain for your audio system.
- Volume balancer: This option ensures that the sound levels from different audio sources always remain the same. Obviously, it is only used if you have multiple devices connected at the same time, such as speakers and headphones.
Windows Sonic for spatial sound
Finally, if we go to the Spatial Sound tab, we can enable this curious Windows option which is only available for headphones, and as you can see, it only allows us to enable or disable.
This feature is supposed to improve spatial sound even if you are using stereo headphones, but from now on we tell you to be careful as it doesn’t work very well in games.
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