I have a gateway laptop. When I watch dvd's, and listen to downloaded audio, I loose the voice portion of the sound, as if I have a surround sound system and have unplugged the center speaker. This only happens on the headphone output. The laptop speakers are fine. On music/audio books etc. it is just muffled/digitized sounding, on dvd's the voice track of the main characters is gone completely, soundtrack and background voice is clear. I have removed and re-installed my nvdvd software, removed and reinstalled my sound card, no change. I have changed all settings in control panel-sound devices that I can find. Any suggestions. I use the headphone output through an fm-mod a lot so this function is important to me. Thanks

Hello Pdot, Problem you mention is more related to hardware than software, I'd suggest you bring back your laptop to your dealer or any technician you know, in order to test your material.... you probably made a mistake to plug your surround sound system into headphone output plug which is totally impossible !!! electric tension are different using specific's plugs..... "Essential is to participate.. Pierre de Coubertin"

control panel > sounds and audio devices under the first tab 'sounds' in the 'speaker settings' section click on 'advanced' and select stereo headphones. this should solve the problem. Today's subliminal thought is: 'Calm down ... it's only ones and zeros.' icq 10183575

Mattie, I've tried that, and just tried it again. I can set that advanced setting to anything including no speakers and it makes no difference. Is there some effect that it should be having. I suspect that we are on the right track as I have reinstalled and replaced drivers for all hardware and software and it makes no difference. It must be a windows setting somewhere, but deeper than that. Thanks for the response, any other suggestions? Imp. I may have to bring it in. It just doesn't make sense that it is hardware related beacause it is such an obvious surround sound decoding type issue, especially when it is so obviously worse when it an encoded medium like dvd, and very half way when it is not. This sounds like a setting somewhere but I can't find it yet. Thanks

Shot in the dark: replace codecs. ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2