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Try turning off the feedback sound with volume keys
Authored by: MJCube on Aug 28, '04 12:43:43PM
I had a problem similar to this, but worse, several times in the last few months: Suddenly the keyboard volume keys would adjust the left side only, while the right side stayed at full volume. When I went to Sound Prefs, the balance slider for my HK speakers had disappeared, and instead it said "The selected device has no output controls."

More than once the problem went away by itself just as mysteriously as it started, but not by anything I did deliberately (including logging out, restarting, unplugging peripherals, trashing prefs). A couple days ago it happened to the other pair of speakers I have connected to an iMic. And this was even worse, because in addition to the volume & balance control problem, the sound quality was really poor.

Yesterday I finally discovered I could fix the problem completely with the Audio MIDI Setup utility: Just reset the parameters for the speakers that went wrong. The strange volume response was because the speakers got reset to mono rather than stereo, and the bad sound over the iMic was a low bit depth setting.

These malfunctions seem to have been caused by hitting a volume key on the keyboard when the hard drive was busy. Or, one time, I switched sound output devices with SoundSource at the moment iChat was playing a sound. The common thread seems to be the System trying to play a sound and access the disk for something else at the same moment.

So I have unchecked "Play feedback when volume keys are pressed" in Sound prefs, and I know what to do if it should happen again. I'd be interested to know if anyone has their speaker balance go off (or anything like the above) with the feedback sound off.

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THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!
Authored by: OSXgenius on Jan 28, '05 10:45:45PM
All I can say is WOW!! Using Audio MIDI Setup worked and now my Yamaha YST-MS35D USB speakers are singing in stereo again. THANKS AGAIN!

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Try turning off the feedback sound with volume keys
Authored by: fractacular on May 21, '05 03:25:04PM

Yes, my balance still gets messed up even with feedback keys off, using a new 1.67Ghz 15" PB and the built in analog audio out. This also happened on my last powerbook (with feedback off), a DVI TiBook (800Mhz). I'm running 10.4.1 now and have found it to still be an issue -- in fact, that's why I visited this thread, hoping for a solution to this long time problem.

Marc



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