[Help] Dead Sound Channel

[Seedler]

2 weeks ago, the right sound channel on my 3 year old Ipod Video went dead, now there is only sound coming out of the left earphone and I did some googling around, seems there's nothing I could do about it. Bad luck I guess, 3 years of abuse is a good run.

What really pisses me off however, is the fact that today whiling youtubing, the left sound channel on my LAPTOP went dead

There is no sound coming out of the left speaker, nor the left earphone when I plug one in.

There isn't much I can do about this either as this is an IBM X61 tablet, with realtek ac 97 audio integrated onto the motherboard, however I'm wondering if I could buy one of those USB sound cards and use that instead? Would that fix my problem? If so, could anyone suggestion a good/cheap USB sound card?

Thanks so much in advance.

P.S.: Don't ever buy SONY/IBM.

[Skiz]

Seems the first item of business is to identify the problem. It could be your sound card, a loose wire, the speaker itself, etc...

Have you checked your Device Manager?

[tesco]

A new sound card will fix the problem as long as it's not a bad headphone/speaker connection (easy enough to test, i'm sure you can figure it out).

As well as the USB ones there are PCMCIA sound cards, if you notebook has a free pcmcia slot (to be honest I know nothing about pcmcia and whether or not it still exists in modern laptops )

[clocker]

A new sound card will fix the problem as long as it's not a bad headphone/speaker connection (easy enough to test, i'm sure you can figure it out).

Maybe the left side of his head has failed.

Rotate your head 180° and see if that fixes it.

[Seedler]

When I don't plug in the headphone/speaker jack all the way in, I get sound from both speakers/headphones.

This also happens with my Ipod, but since I won't be walking/running with my laptop, I guess I can live with non-stereo sound.

Thanks again.