[Help] Dead Sound Channel

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:frusty:

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.

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?

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 :lol:)

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Originally Posted by 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).

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Maybe the left side of his head has failed.

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

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.