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Playing along with a laptop

B

brakbrak

Guest
Nov 19, 2010
45
0
Toronto, Canada
#1
Hey guys, I usually plug in my desktop to my bass amplifier (CD/Line in) and just play my bass. However, my desktop is in my work room and the room isn't very big so I just want to move my bass to my room thinking that I can just do the same to my laptop. However, when I plug in my laptop to my bass amplifier, I can't hear anything. I figured that it might be that my laptop's sound card is crappy. If that's the reason, what would an alternative be so that I can play along with my laptop?
Thanks in advance for answering guys!
 
#2
If your going from the laptop headphones out to the amp line in it should work fine. Make sure that the volume is up on the laptop. plug headphones into the laptop to make sure its putting out sound. could be your headphone jack is toast.
 
#3
Hey thanks for the reply, my laptop headphone jack works perfectly, I just don't know why it doesn't work. Doesn't work for my tablet and phone either.
Technotitclan said:
If your going from the laptop headphones out to the amp line in it should work fine. Make sure that the volume is up on the laptop. plug headphones into the laptop to make sure its putting out sound. could be your headphone jack is toast.
Click to expand...
 
#4
Are you using the same cable?

Do you have the volume up high enough on your laptop?


I have had laptops come into our theatre that couldn't talk to the direct box without terrible problems even though they still sounded fine on their speaker, and it turned out that they had bad sound cards, so this certainly is possible, but I wouldn't give up on the card until you've experimented to assure that the problem doesn't lie elsewhere.
 
#5
brakbrak said:
Hey thanks for the reply, my laptop headphone jack works perfectly, I just don't know why it doesn't work. Doesn't work for my tablet and phone either.
Click to expand...

Very strange. Is it the same cable you use with the desktop? Possibly bad cable if its not. Your going to have to go through each piece of the chain her to find the problem. laptop>headphone jack>cable>input jack of amp>amp. I find it really odd that a desktop will work but a laptop or mobile device will not. Output level is the same therefore should work the same.
 
#8
Have the same problem with a new toshiba laptop. Can play an online drum machine thru our desktop to bass amp and get plenty of volume. Try the same thing with this laptop and there just is not enough volume even with laptop turned up to max. Guess its just a different type of sound card? This is using the headphone out on both, its the only way i can see to hook them up.
 
#10
Also look for the small application (on your hard drive) that most sounds cards load when you install them.

Mine has all kinds of input and output options.

The default settings (on mine) were pretty wrong as I recall.
 

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