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November 29th, 2017 08:00
Latitude 7470 Headphone Audio Problem
Recently, I used my wireless headphones to listen while viewing a webcast on my laptop (Latitude 7470) and found sound was coming only from the right headphone. I thought it was an audio problem with the webcast but after the webcast finished the issue persisted. Using Windows 7 tests and tests found on the internet, I discovered that the left and right audio channels were being merged and delivered only to the right headphone --- no audio coming from the left headphone. I played with all of the Windows controls I could find and then uninstalled and reinstalled the RealTek sound card driver and nothing changed. I did a system restore to a date I knew the headphone audio was working properly. The issue presents itself when plugging into the audio plug on my docking station or directly into the laptop, so I don’t think it could be a bad audio jack. The issue is also the same when plugging in an Apple earbud set to either jack, all the sound going to the right earplug. I downloaded and installed the latest updates from Dell for my motherboard and still no change.
I did a lot of searching on the internet and could not find any recommended fixes other than uninstalling and reinstalling the sound card driver and/or doing a system restore to a date when I knew the sound was working properly. As mentioned, neither of those activities eliminated the problem. I even opened up my laptop looking for loose or missing connections but found none.
Built in speakers work normally, left audio to left speaker and right audio to right speaker. The headphone function was working properly the day before.
Have any of you guys seen this type of behavior before. Any suggestions as to a remedy?
Jim Coates
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December 3rd, 2017 06:00
Hello. sorry you did not receive a timely reply.
It seems to me that you have exhausted most software remedies short of performing a full system recovery. I assume you have tried various headphones. If it is a hardware defect in the computer you would need to let tech support repair it if still under warranty.
If the warranty has expired, another test you can do is to run Linux Live from a flash drive. If the problem is there in Linux that would rule out a problem in Windows itself and in the Windows drivers. That would point more to hardware as the culprit.
Crackerjack75
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December 5th, 2017 08:00
Well, I have egg on my face and fortified the premise of Occam's Razor. After trying three sets of headphones with no sound in the left earpiece, I was ready to create a bootable image of my laptop and reset the system to factory settings when I decided to borrow a 4th set (earbuds) before going through that and viola --- sound in my left ear. Tried a 5th and again sound in both ears.
Consider the odds of 3 headphone sets with the same failure?1? On the plus side, I now am using the latest Realtek driver and my motherboard has all of the latest Dell updates.
Thanks for you response; I consider the issue closed.