Centris 610 questions

[Apostrophe]

Hi,

One of my 3 Macs is a Macintosh Centris 610. It works really well, there's nothing wrong with it, but I noticed something strange when I turned it on a couple of days ago. When it does alert sounds, and when it speaks text, I hear it loud and clear. But when it plays any music CD at all, the volume is very low, and to hear it I had to lean in close. It only started doing this just now, I don't remember it doing this before. I looked in the Sound control panel (by the way, the OS is 7.6) and ensured the volume was on maximum. I also tried putting the volume at maximum at the Audio player. Nothing changed.

Is there someplace else that the volume is controlled? I don't think there's anything wrong with the speakers, since I heard the other sounds loud and clear. There wouldn't be a problem with the CD drive or caddy, would there?

Thanks,

-Apostrophe

 

[russman]

There should be a cable running inside the mac from the Cd drive to the motherboard, should be very thin but about a centimeter wide, not the scsi cable but this cable plays the audio directly to the sound hardware to avoid tying down the mac when an audio cd is playing. Make sure this is properly connected on both ends.

 

[Bunsen]

And the right way round at both ends. The connector should be keyed so you can't put it in the wrong way, but you never know. Also check the cable for fraying. Could be a loose wire inside the cable or connectors.

 

[Apostrophe]

Hi,

I checked the cable you mentioned, I even dusted it off and reseated it on both sides. Booted up the Centris, put in a CD...still didn't play it as loud as it used to, and the alert sounds are still loud and clear.

But an idea just occurred to me. For a while the Centris was without a floppy drive, since the original was damaged and even screwed up the system until I removed it. While it was floppy drive-less, it played CDs so that I could hear every note. I also noticed that the sound originated from inside the computer, near or on the CD drive. Is that where the speakers are?

But I believe that ever since I put in that replacement floppy drive (which works great) the sound may have been blocked by the new hardware inside the computer. And the reason that I can hear the alert sounds is that they're loud to begin with. And, experimenting further, I found that some CDs play louder than others, depending on how they were recorded. Does this idea seem well-founded?

Thanks,

-Apostrophe

 

[russman]

Try hooking up some external speakers to your mac. Glad to hear you got it working again but it would be a bit of a pain to have to remove your floppy drive every time you want to play a cd.

 

[Bunsen]

I checked the cable you mentioned / ever since I put in that replacement floppy drive / the sound may have been blocked by the new hardware / the reason that I can hear the alert sounds is that they're loud to begin with. / Does this idea seem well-founded?

Nope. If you can hear the alerts at full volume, then you should be able to hear CDs at the same volume. The only things that would make them different would be a software setting, a faulty or mis-placed cable, a faulty connection on the motherboard or on the CD drive, or a faulty drive.

I don't think a fault in the motherboard sound IC is indicated if the alerts are OK, but I could be wrong. It could be a bad motherboard trace somewhere, I guess.

So I'll put down a few suggestions here; try them in order and let us know what you get.

First off - thoroughly explore the Sound control panel. I don't recall 7.6 very well, but it should have separate volumes for alerts and other audio, tick boxes for CD play through (or some such term) - anyway, have a good poke around in there. There's a tick box for where CD audio should go - to the internal speaker or to the speaker jack at the rear.

By 7.6, do you mean 7.6.1? If not, it would be a good idea to download the free update. Dunno if it will help with this particular problem, but it's a good idea in general and worth a bash.

If that doesn't work, tell us exactly which pins the CD audio cable is connected to at both ends.

Connecting external speakers shouldn't make any difference, unless that box is ticked.

Does the drive have a headphone socket on the front? If so, stick some phones in there and see what you get.

There should be three cables to the drive - audio, power and SCSI. The audio cable won't always be about a centimeter (half-inch) wide, sometimes it's just two or three strands - depends on the Mac. Test, or get someone to test, the cable for continuity and shorts with a multimeter.

If all of the above fails we can take it from there.