old speakers - are they screwed?

[Davao]

Hi all.
I have an old altec lansing speakers from the first dell I bought
...er 10 years ago.
Every sound that comes out of them now has BRRRR sound every 10 to 15
seconds.
Is it time to junk them or is it a virus or something?

Thanks.

Arthur

 

[philo]

Hi all.
I have an old altec lansing speakers from the first dell I bought
..er 10 years ago.
Every sound that comes out of them now has BRRRR sound every 10 to 15
seconds.
Is it time to junk them or is it a virus or something?

Thanks.

Arthur

could be a bad connection
or a problem with your sound card.

the speakers themselves may be fine

 

[Paul]

Hi all.
I have an old altec lansing speakers from the first dell I bought
..er 10 years ago.
Every sound that comes out of them now has BRRRR sound every 10 to 15
seconds.
Is it time to junk them or is it a virus or something?

Thanks.

Arthur

Do you have a Walkman, or other audio device, with a 1/8" stereo
output jack on it ?

You could connect an audio source, other than the computer, and
test the Altec amplified speakers that way.

I bought a pair of Altec amplified speakers (ACS21W), some time ago, and
since my stereo (mixer/amp) failed recently, I've been using them
instead. I have a cold solder joint in one channel (which I located
and can restore by poking the solder with a fingernail). So it could
be a problem with the PCB inside the unit that has the volume control
and on/off switch. The plastic casing on the speaker is the devil
to get apart - it is glued and not screwed.

But if you test with a separate sound source than the computer, like
the Walkman or even an old tape recorder, you should get some idea
whether the BRRRR is caused by the built-in amp, or the noise was
coming from the computer.

Paul

 

[kony]

Hi all.
I have an old altec lansing speakers from the first dell I bought
..er 10 years ago.
Every sound that comes out of them now has BRRRR sound every 10 to 15
seconds.
Is it time to junk them or is it a virus or something?

Thanks.

Arthur

No, unless they were fed with a severely distorted signal
or turned up too loud constantly, they are probably fine.

What is more likely with sound degradation at a regular
interval like this is some software or bios monitoring
setting interfering with the sound card data stream.

You didn't mention the sound card, the system, all the
(PCI?) cards, etc, so there isn't much to go on yet. I'd
start by disabling all background apps (windows?) OS is
running, and pull out all other PCI cards to see if it makes
a difference.