External sound card question

rockitup

One of my friend's has a Toshiba Laptop and the sound card appears not to work any more.

They have tried checking settings but no luck getting it to work. I suggested that maybe a USB sound card may work but there seems to be a few different types around.

Could anyone help out with any suggestions as to which ones would do, mainly they just use Skype, sometimes the kid's use games or listen to music but nothing too expensive needed, just something reliable would do.

Thanks in advance.

Lucero_2

Anything from Creative or Asonic will do the job and probably be cheap. USB will be the way forward.

problem with using an external sound card is that they will probably need to use a micrphone (unless their webcam has one, assuming not a built in webcam)

http://www.ebuyer.com/106540-asonic-external-usb2-0-8-channel-sound-card-a-cm106

closed

check drivers are installed and working in device manager, and volume controls

alternatively a backup and factory restore might fix it.

rockitup

Thanks for both replies, I called them and tried to run a few checks and they updated the drivers on Realtek (under sound, control panel) There was no Volume Mixer Control when they right-clicked on speaker icon on taskbar.

For the sake of £10 for a sound card or £20 or so for some X-Mini USB speakers they agreed to go down that route. They do have a built-in webcam on the laptop so hopefully the mic should work ok.

Thanks again

AmongTheLiving

rockitup wrote: »

Thanks for both replies, I called them and tried to run a few checks and they updated the drivers on Realtek (under sound, control panel) There was no Volume Mixer Control when they right-clicked on speaker icon on taskbar.

For the sake of £10 for a sound card or £20 or so for some X-Mini USB speakers they agreed to go down that route. They do have a built-in webcam on the laptop so hopefully the mic should work ok.

Thanks again

If the webcam is built in, the mic will not work. When you plug in the external soundcard, it will take control of ALL audio, meaning that the laptop's mic will stop working, the same as the speakers, until the external soundcard is unplugged again.

rockitup

Ok thanks for that, I'll ask them to buy a USB Mic as well then. I have seen those small omni-directional mics quite cheap.

AmongTheLiving

rockitup wrote: »

Ok thanks for that, I'll ask them to buy a USB Mic as well then. I have seen those small omni-directional mics quite cheap.

No, a USB mic won't work either (if you're using an external soundcard, that is), because you have to plug it into the PC, and as I said, the PC's audio is disabled while the soundcard is plugged in. You need a regular mic with a regular jack that you can plug INTO THE SOUNDCARD itself.