The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Old Acer Aspire 1690 Sound (hardware) problem

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by Jupex, Aug 24, 2009.

  1. Jupex

    Jupex Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hi guys!


    I've read your discussions for a while now and it seems that here are quite many professional laptop-guys. I know that old Acers have sound problems but this is a bit different than those what I've read so I ask from you if you can help.

    So I have Acer 1690Wlmi with Conexant AC-link Audio system. I have increased my ram from 512 to 1256. Processor is Intel Pentium M715 1,5Ghz. I raised FSB from 400Mhz to 533Mhz by doing the pinmod (so cpu core speed is ~2Ghz) . My GPU is Ati Radeon X700 with 64mb's of memory. Belive or not, this really runs all the software I need. Not a gaming machine, but reliable basic machine for surfing, school works, movies etc...

    The problem with the machine is that sound from the right speaker is badly distorted. If I use laptops own speakers I have to use only left speaker because right speaker ruins the whole sound. The sound is so bad that if I wouldn't know I would say that my right speaker is physically broken (like I thought for a year and half). This problem has been in XP, Vista and Win 7.

    Yesterday I disassembled my laptop for a better view of a speaker (I was going to order new one). I looked at it and saw that it looked just fine... no physical damage. Well, I took my multimeter (or circuit analyzer or what do you guys call it :confused: ...it measures volts, amperes and ohms) and I must admit that I confused a little when the resistance of speaker was 4 ohms...isn't that just what it's meant to be. My left speaker (sounds ok) gave also that 4 ohms. So if I believe that, my speaker is ok...

    Well.. I tested the "broken" speaker with my home stereos. I took my home stereos speaker cable and put it into the connector of "broken" speaker. Surprisingly it sounded clean. I increased the volume of my home stereos and i heard no distorted sounds from computer speaker.

    Well... I tought there must be some kind of bad contact somewhere between my speakers and soundcard. I measured left channel resistance from + to - and right channel resistance from + to - (from circuit board connector). I don't remember the exact results but both measures showed same result.... So I guess this proves my bad contact suspicion as false.....? :confused:

    Does anyone know what should be the resistance of left channel minus and right channel minus... My common sense (usually as useful as a zipper in a**hole) says that the cabels of both speakers goes to sound card. After that those lead to ground somewhere. --> Can that resistance be much. Now, again, I don't remember my result for this, but it was huge...like megaohm or something. So if minus cabels from both channels leads to sound card and from there to same ground point (both???) it means that my Conexant in between makes a hell of a resistance... Am I still on the right track :confused: ? So could this be only a grounding problem??

    Please, just say it if I'm totally wrong :D
    I'm no electrician or computer engineer... I'm just a noob whos trying to use his common sense :D

    This nasty little problem has teased me for a year and a half now. If someone has even a clue where the problem might be, give it a try and guess. You can bet I'll check that out if I haven't done that yet.
     
    Jupex, Aug 24, 2009
    #1