I'm in deep doo doo

Marilyn Taylor · **Voice Talent** Joined: 30 Oct 2006 Posts: 400

If anyone can help me I'd sure appreciate it...I have no audio...suddenly!
I did an audition this morning, everything was working fine...Now I came back to work and voila! NO SOUND. The microphone doesn't show any activity and I can't hear anything through the headset...not even on iTunes....the only thing I did between it working and not working was delete a whole bunch of stuff from my e-mail and then shut down...I'm in serious trouble hear cuz I've got a job I need to complete and no way of knowing what's going on....could someone who knows more than please advise? I'm desperate :0

Rod Maupin · **Voice Talent** Joined: 18 May 2008 Posts: 8

Hi Marilyn. It could be several things.

One obvious thing is that your sound card could have died. Another possibility, is that through some email, a virus got installed to your system and has wreaked havoc. However that is a more remote possiblity. Generally the type of problem you are having suggests a hardware problem.

Over the years, I have many times had the situation where everthing was working fine, I turn the computer off, I come back later, boot it back up, and something doesn't work.

So, everything else on the computer works except you get no sound through headphones or speakers? What kind of digital audio interface do you have? If you have something that is responsible for all the sound coming out of your computer, then that could be the thing having the problem.

I have an E-MU 1616M interface. It's a card in the computer, and a cable going to an external box. The external box has the monitor and speaker connections. If you have something similar, then that device could have gone out. If this is the case, then do you have a headphones jack on the computer that you could plug into and bypass your interface. If you do, and you hear sound that way, then your interface is the problem.

If you are positive that you have done nothing except delete emails, then that is more puzzling. What version of windows are you running? If you have Windows, is Automatic Updates turned on? If it is, then an update could have been installed to your computer behind the scenes, and could be causing a problem.

Just some things to look at.

Rod Maupin · **Voice Talent** Joined: 18 May 2008 Posts: 8

Another possibility is a bad cable. That would be something simple.

Another option is that if you have a pet, they could have gotten their leg caught in a cable and pulled it loose enough to where it still looks plugged in, but is enough to cause the problem. It's happened to me several times.

To diagnose, you have to examine your whole chain, take one device out of the picture, one at a time, and see if it then works.

Rod Maupin · **Voice Talent** Joined: 18 May 2008 Posts: 8

A more remote possibility is that this could be a driver issue. It's a more remote possiblity. I would check the other things first.

If you have not installed/uninstalled anything to/from your computer, then it's probably not a driver issue.

I'm just trying to bring different things up.

Marilyn Taylor · **Voice Talent** Joined: 30 Oct 2006 Posts: 400

Rod, you are so kind to respond to my distress call. Your diagnostic questions helped me solve the problem. I can't figure out how it happened but in Device set up, the wrong Asio driver was showing and in the control panel the wrong playback device was showing and it didn't match the device in the editing system. Once I fixed both of them....I had sound not just in the editing program but in iTunes ect....
problem solved.... I don't think I 'splained' that right....but thanks again for your time and thought in this..

If anyone else has this problem,, contact me and I'll walk you through it...

Chris Clementson · **Voice Seeker** Joined: 14 Jan 2008 Posts: 216

Every once in a while computers develop minds of their own. You might boot up one day and the computer will decide that today you're not going to record from your firewire interface but rather from the SPDIF input which you never use and which isn't even connected. This is a known phenomenon.

Marilyn Taylor · **Voice Talent** Joined: 30 Oct 2006 Posts: 400

you got that right!!!! Very Happy