After being kicked to the curb too many times, MrsD.'s cheapass 2.1 speakers got replaced with a considerably more expensve logitech model. Now I'm trying to resuscitate the old set. Got 'em plugged into my ubuntu web server pc and got 'em working again. Sort of. One speaker had broke loose of it's little enclosure, so I opened it and screwed it back in place. However it doesn't work, no sound out (other speaker and the woofer do work). When I plug headphones into the pc I get stereo.

Oddly, when I crank down the volume of the 'dead' speaker, I seem to get decent mono sound out of the remaining two (instead of just one track louder). Why would that be?

Anyway, any tips on diagnosing/repairing a dead speaker? The leads appear to be intact. Could I replace it with a 'generic' bare speaker of similar size? (I actually had one that would have been a perfect replacement which I tossed about a year ago :-@)

After some googling it appears there may be an Ubuntu audio config issue with 2.1 setup (the pulse volume/mixer doesn't even have a 2.1 option, it goes from plain stereo to 4.1). So I guess I need to test 'em on a different PC first to confirm if it is a problem with the speaker not working.

Hmm. Which version of pulseaudio? I'm on 8.0 and 2.1 is definitely an option:

http://i.imgur.com/XljM0nR.png

It might be that pavucontrol just shows more stuff so maybe try installing that if you've not. Also check for muted channels in alsamixer cos that happens sometimes, but I imagine you've checked that.

Yeah I tried them on my main pc which has a real sound card vs. onboard ac97 shit. Similar options there in fedora 19. Pulse is 3.0-10.fc19, pavucontrl 2.0-1.fc19 so a bit old. I'm thinking it's probably the hardware: loose connection somewhere or maybe blown pcb. Or even the speaker is really dead.

That is an old ass version of pulse.

The speaker may or may not be fucked but I'm pretty sure a more recent version of pulse would give you more options. It's only relatively recently that pulse actually started being good. I'm on shitty onboard sound so I don't think that's the issue ... although maybe, I don't know much about how sound works.

 

I don't think there not being 2.1 would be an issue. Analog 2.1 still just uses a standard stereo R/L signal. So you'd hear it through both speakers. Swapping channels of the speakers would tell you if it's a channel issue.

If you can plug in any old spare speaker in its place, I'd give that a go.

Dodgy contacts, joints and leads sounds more likely.

Yeah, I'll have to decide whether this worth repairing, or just wait for another $25 refurb. to come up... I guess it might be worth a $5 + 5-minute gamble.