DFI Lanparty Ultra-D sound gone bad?... (or worse...)

[Mephistopheles]

I recently noticed that my brand-new DFI Lanparty UT Ultra-D's onboard sound is only sending an audio signal corresponding to the right speaker, but no signal to the left speaker.

I've tested the speakers, and they're OK, and I've played music in both Windows XP and SuSE Linux and both play only on the right speaker, so it has to be hardware-related - which is why I think the Ultra-D is to blame.

Now this board is quite new (I bought it at around 22-23 september or so - not much more than a month ago), so it's still covered by warranty terms.

Question is, given the malfunction is only with the onboard audio and given that I wanted to upgrade to dedicated sound and 5.1 speakers anyway because of the rather subpar sound quality, I could just jump for it and ignore the problem altogether... (it's actually even a good excuse for doing so, heh )

...it's probably an easier solution too, but I'd feel a little stupid... I could try and return the board, but trouble is, the official DFI reseller in my country isn't dealing with Lanparty UT products yet (yes, they're that stupid), and it would probably take some time to replace the damned board because I bought it from this guy who imports new boards.

So I'm leaning towards forgetting the onboard sound and getting a dedicated sound card (probably Audigy 2 7.1 ZS) and speakers (I had my eyes set on the Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speaker set even before this happened). What do you guys think, should I try to get a replacement mobo anyway?...

Edit: actually, the guy who sold me my Ultra-D has some in stock; I'd probably just have to talk to him - and then replace my mobo and put the system together again... but still...

 

[Mephistopheles]

Hm.... I'm feeling a little lazy and I'm thinking I'll probably upgrade to a dedicated graphics card. Forget the onboard sound, it's theoretically crap anyway and the mobo is otherwise perfect (as far as I can tell, anyway)....

So I'm leaning towards a Logitech Z-5500 Speaker Set and a Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic Sound card. What do you guys think?

 

[Rob423]

supposedly that's some great sound hardware...

but now back up a second, i see you said you changed your speakers and what not. But did you check your MOBO drivers..... look on the motherboards website and if nothing there, just do a normal Device Manager, Audio Driver update. you never know could of just been some bad drivers

 

[Mephistopheles]

No, that couldn't be it, one of the channels just went dead out of the blue and for no reason, but both were working during the first weeks of operation!


And having said that, I tested the speakers on both SuSE and Windows; drivers are not likely to be the problem because the malfunction appeared on both for no reason.