My Audigy 2 Seems To Have Died
Well, this bites. My Audigy 2 NX has died. I’ve gone over the plugs and wires and can’t figure out what it’s problem is, it simply stopped working.
It flickered for a moment, coming back on long enough to make Windows think that it had detected new hardware, then turned back off. No ammount of wire jiggling or socket swapping has caused its little lights to come back on again.
I’ll have to fiddle with it and hope that it’s a simple solution, but I appear to be without sound. Possibly for a good long while. 
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I’d describe myself as a very ecclectic and strange individual. My interests range from the very spiritual to the very technical, having delved into both non-mainstream faiths as well as little bit of Linux. I’ve been called a “hopeless romantic” by a very dear and intelligent woman and I find that quite fitting, and I typically shun social interaction in general.
This blog is a sister blog to Shadows In Motion and will most likely be used for personal posts; what goes on in my life, perhaps some of my writing, random thoughts and so on. Be prepared for some strange ideas!
Someone brought up the obvious to me; onboard sound. I forgot that I even have that. So, though it won’t be nearly as good, I should at least be able to get some audio out of this system.
Maybe if I feel up to it tomorrow I’ll mess with the hardware s’more, but I doubt that it’ll come back on. When I unplug the USB Audigy 2 NX I can hear the speakers make a very obvious sound. Same when I plug it back in.
So it’s receiving juice to the sound device, the sound device simply is not turning on.
Well, I suppose it’s not too bad considering how long I’ve had it. A few years now? and I hardly turned it off at all during that period (turning it off made Windows think the device was gone, and turning it on triggered the new device install. therefore, I simply never bothered with turning it off)
~Steph
I have the onboard sound going now, but it’s not working flawlessly.
The front left and front right speakers refuse to work regardless of the configuration of the wires or the software settings. The side left and side right speakers work perfectly and with 5.1 software configuration I do get a center speaker.
What it boils down to is: Do I want to use only the side left and side right speakers, or, do I want a front center, side left/right, and subwoofer?
Unfortunately most audio now plays out of only the one center speaker.
Gaming is also a problem. This AC97 onboard chip can put out only 26 sounds. This means that audio in games are dropped. Voices for characters will vanish, the sound of swinging or drawing a weapon isn’t there, audio for foot steps will sometimes vanish, at other times the music won’t play, and so on.
It simply doesn’t have enough “channels” to play all of it at once.
On the other thand, at least I do have some audio now.
Winamp does not seem to handle this odd speaker configuration very well (it’s effectively a 3.1), but Windows Media Player and Quicktime player each handle it decently enough. Those two players will make use of the side channels while playing back audio.
So my audio files can play back “well enough” for now.