Two people on a Swedish Morphos forum have tried to use the head phones on Powerbooks and they don't work. Is this a lacking feature on 3.1? If so, are they planning to fix it (till 3.2 maybe?)? I want to use external speakers and head phones if I buy one.

Headphones do work, but there is a missing feature of phones autodetection in the driver. Unlike many simple devices switching between headphones and speakers in PowerBook is not hardware but software controlled. Current driver only checks headphones socket at playback start, so when you plug them later, sound is still being sent to speakers. You have to stop the sound, plug the jack and start again.

[ Edited by Krashan 01.05.2013 - 19:30 ]

I don't have to restart the computer or something? Just plug it in and restart the sound sourse?

I don't have to restart the computer or something? Just plug it in and restart the sound sourse?

Yes, computer restart is not needed. Technically speaking you have to reopen driver in an application. For most applications stopping the sound and starting again is enough (note that pause is usually not enough). Some applications may need application restart.

Just like on AROS then. Thanks

Ok, I just got myself a Powerbook :D

Headphones and internal speakers works, but I want to attach external speakers but the sound is very very low. Is there something I can do about this?

[Edit] Ok, headphones are not as loud as I want to so add this to my question too.

[ Edited by Yasu 24.05.2013 - 20:36 ]

I want to attach external speakers but the sound is very very low.

For external speakers you have to use the same procedure as for headphones, so attach them before you start the sound. Another reason may be that your speakers are passive (have no amplifier built-in).

headphones are not as loud as I want to

It depends on headphones impedance. Most small headphones have 32 ohms, but some higher quality ones may have more. Higher impedance means lower level of sound. There are two solutions: change headphones or connect them through headphone amplifier.

@Krashan

I did that already, but even though those speakers roar out a lot of sound on my Acer Aspire One ZG5 with AROS they are almost dead silent on my Powerbook. Does it have something to do with the software rather than the hardware?

I found the button to raise volume so it sounds better on my headphone now but it could still be a little louder. The headphone I use doesn't help much at all.

i agree that the sound output on the powerbook is pretty low at max volume, it's much louder in OSX. I made tests with some of my headphones, with some very high impedance cans (Sennheiser HD800) and also lower impedance ones (Philips Fidelio X1, Sennheiser Momentum, Focal Spirit One, Sennheiser HD25-1 *** yes i'm a headphones maniac ***) and it doesn't sound much louder with low imp ones. I bypassed the issue by pluging the powerbook to my Fiio E9K headphone amp but the powerbook is known for its high quality audio output so it would be nice to use the full potential of it.

can someone else confirm this low output issue ?

I would at least like to know if this problem is known and worked on for 3.2 or not

I also realised today that the sound balance is very poor. For instance, a lot of movie files highten music while talking is muffled and low in volume.

Quote:

this happens usually with 5.1 audio when playing in 2.0 (stereo). Some OS/sound API would downmix it in a clever way but i guess morphOS/AHI doesn't.