No audio thru headphones

[FONE_STAR]

Hi, I have Knoppix Auditor installed to HD on my Inspiron 2200.

The audio works thru the speakers but when I attatch my headphones it kills the speakers and I can hear nothing thru my headphones. My audio controller is Intel Corp (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03).

I would like to make it work so that when I attatch my headphones I can hear music only thru them. Don't see any sort of config dealing with headphones under the audio settings.

Any help appreciated,

Fearon

[BH]

On most laptops the headphone socket is hardwired to switch off the speakers when the plug is inserted, and there is normally no controller or anything that controls it - it's an immutable hardware (mechanical) function. Are you sure that your headphones are working at all? Because if there is sound in the speakers normally, but no sound in the headphones there are only 2 possible causes:
- the headphones are broken - either the plug, cable or actual transducers (most common)
- if the laptop is quite old, the socket may be broken - if the headphones work normally when connected to other devices (like cd-players, etc.) but fail on your laptop, then it's surely a mechanical failure of the socket - inspect it for damage (or have a pro inspect it if you don't know how)

As a side note, the sockets on the Inspiron series are apparently of very poor quality. My old Inspiron 5000 also had a similar problem (intermittent sound when wiggling the plug).

[dwieberd]

I also have been unable to get the sound to switch to headphones and I don't believe it's caused by anything mechanical.
If I boot the same laptop in Windows Vista, the switch to headphones works like expected. Also, there are posts on the
Ubuntu forum addressing the same issue, but I haven't found a suggestion there that has helped in my case.
My laptop has an Intel HDA sound card. For some reason I can't seem to find anything more specific about it,
such as what type of chip is used on the card.