Laptop - no sound from headphones

JohnB47

Thanks guys. Laptop isn't under warranty and nothing unusual done with it recently. It gets very little usage actually, just web browsing, listening to mp3s and emails, nothing fancy.

I'll consider the possibility of the port being dirty. I'm still planning to see if there's an Asus audio app that might be getting in the way.

In the meantime I've searched the Asus site and came across the latest driver, but that's what is already installed:

Realtek Audio Driver (Support ICEPower APO)

Version V6.0.9172.1

34.82 MB

2021/06/02

Would it be worth downloading that from the Asus site and getting the laptop to install that?

km1500

as I say I am fairly sure you have a hardware problem and no matter what you download software wise you will not correct the situation

one option is to buy a pair of USB headphones and plug them in that way or even better a USB DAC such as the Dragonfly which will give you much better sound anyway

Username03725

Exclude the obvious…

I heard from our then IT Support of a user with a similar problem. They checked and all was good but user said the problem still existed. Turns out he was plugging the headphones into the socket on the CD player drawer, not the one on the rear panel. 

At risk of teaching you how to suck eggs, are the headphones plugged into the correct socket?

JohnB47

Username03725 said:

Exclude the obvious…

I heard from our then IT Support of a user with a similar problem. They checked and all was good but user said the problem still existed. Turns out he was plugging the headphones into the socket on the CD player drawer, not the one on the rear panel. 

At risk of teaching you how to suck eggs, are the headphones plugged into the correct socket?

Always worth saying. Yes, I've double checked. There's only one socket on the laptop and its labelled, so no mistake there. I will have a further look at it soon and will report back.

JohnB47

Further update. No success but some interesting findings.

First, I found a My Asus app and looked at that. Although it has a section called Audio and Visual, it only shows controls for the screen vividness, no audio controls at all.

Then went into the apps listing and typed Realtek and found an app called Realtek Audio Console. I then clicked on Device Advance Settings and saw that it has a dropdown called 'Connector Retasking' but it was greyed out. I plugged in the headphones and the dropdown became active and I was able to choose from Mic, Headset, Headphones or something else, can't remember.

So this is the first time I've found that the laptop actually recognises me plugging in the headphones! 

The app was still showing Speakers as the chosen output for audio and I couldn't find any way to change that within the app - even after choosing Headphones in the dropdown. I restarted the laptop and still no audio from the headphones and still no way to manually select them. Although re opening the Realtek Audio Console and watching it as I plugged in and unplugged the headphones still got a reaction on the Connector Retasking selector.

Now here's a thing - when I looked at the driver info in the Realtek Audio Console, it showed the same version (6.0.9172.1) that is associated with the 'Sound/Video/Game Controllers' section at the bottom of the device manager listing. Whereas the driver version for Audio Inputs and Outputs/Microphone/Speakers at the top of the device manager list is 10.0.22621.1

Can anyone make any sense of this?

cerebus

Personally I would dump the my Asus app and the realtek one and take it from there, sounds like they could be competing with each other

Just use the inbuilt one from windows 10 for now 

Also have you started in safe mode to see if it works then? This should disable these 

JohnB47

cerebus said:

Personally I would dump the my Asus app and the realtek one and take it from there, sounds like they could be competing with each other

Just use the inbuilt one from windows 10 for now 

Also have you started in safe mode to see if it works then? This should disable these 

It's Win 11 actually.

Just tried starting in safe mode and I couldn't play any mp3 files. Should I have been able to? Tried plugging in the headphones anyway but they didn't automatically show up in Device Manager (like they do on my other, Win 10, laptop).

Is there an 'inbuilt' audio device in Win 11? Can I force the laptop to use that?

cerebus

Yes delete/disable all the sound apps and windows will take over 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/fix-sound-or-audio-problems-in-windows-73025246-b61c-40fb-671a-2535c7cd56c8

Try these too

JohnB47

cerebus said:

Yes delete/disable all the sound apps and windows will take over 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/fix-sound-or-audio-problems-in-windows-73025246-b61c-40fb-671a-2535c7cd56c8

Try these too

OK, that's something else to try. I looked at system restore today. I found three points to choose from and went for the earliest one: 30th June 2023. The restore took about 15 minutes but didn't solve the problem.

I'll try disabling all the sound apps and see what happens.

I'm wondering if I'm heading for a complete reinstall of win 11.

Neil_Jones

JohnB47 said:

cerebus said:

Personally I would dump the my Asus app and the realtek one and take it from there, sounds like they could be competing with each other

Just use the inbuilt one from windows 10 for now 

Also have you started in safe mode to see if it works then? This should disable these 

It's Win 11 actually.

Just tried starting in safe mode and I couldn't play any mp3 files. Should I have been able to? Tried plugging in the headphones anyway but they didn't automatically show up in Device Manager (like they do on my other, Win 10, laptop).

Is there an 'inbuilt' audio device in Win 11? Can I force the laptop to use that?

Audio doesn't work in Safe Mode.  It never has done.  Its not an essential service.  The whole point of Safe Mode is to fix whatever's stopping the system from working in normal mode.

Bearing in mind it used to be considered a luxury to have a sound card in a computer at all, before they became standard faire...