Listening to Audio on Laptop?

[Tomcat017]

Hello All,

I currently have a PSR-500 attached to my laptop, and am using Win500. I have a mono-mono cable connecting the radios headphones jack to the laptop's mic input. Recording works just fine, but I note that I can't hear the audio through the speakers or headphones connected to the laptop. So, I either have to record or listen, but not both. I'm running Vista home premium. Anyone having the same problem?

 

[Northerner71]

Hello, I have the same problem. What I did was to buy a splitter for my scanners earphone jack. With the splitter I run one wire to my laptop to record and the other side I plug some external speakers with a built in amp so I can control the volume at the speakers and not screw up my recording levels. I hope this helps.

 

[johndrake]

My laptop has the same problem. It is due to the cheap half-duplex audio systems that some manufacturer's (Dell) use in their laptops. I tried the splitter cable but then I couldn't hear any of the other audio that comes from the computer through my headphones. I ended up buying a full-duplex USB sound system (X-Fi Go) that works great. The quality of the recordings from the X-Fi Go are also much better than those from the computer's internal sound system.

 

[Tomcat017]

Good to know -- thanks guys. I'll either try the splitter, and just not worry about the rest of audio from the laptop, or I'll try an add-on card.

Interestingly, I was reading, and it seems that you can enable the internal monitoring feature of the sound card, allowing you to simultaneously listen to an input mic (no lag time). The feature was present, apparently, on earlier versions of windows, but not on Vista. Some have managed to enable it on Vista by a series of registry creations and edits, but I'm not that brave. Also heard that internal monitor enable was restored as a feature on Windows 7, but I can't confirm.

 

[llwade]

question to NORTHERNER,

with the use of the splitter, was there any noticeable volume loss of signal, at the computer
.
I have one of those cheap DELL laptops also & liked your inexpensive repair idea
.

 

[autovon]

I am running vista and ran into the same problem.

Download VLC media player and once you get it installed, click on the media tab and then open capture device. It will repeat what is going into the computer through the computer speakers with about a half second delay.

 

[Northerner71]

question to NORTHERNER,

with the use of the splitter, was there any noticeable volume loss of signal, at the computer
.
I have one of those cheap DELL laptops also & liked your inexpensive repair idea
.

I run a cheap Dell inspiron that is 7 yrs old and all I do is when I set up the record I test the first couple of recordings and adjust my volume on my radio until it is perfect for the recording and then I use the volume control on my stand alone speakers to hear live audio.