Volume

sorry, silly question, but did you try to fix the volume by hand, i.e. use alsa mixer or your volume control of choice and turn on/off the appropriate channel? and just in case, are you sure you plugged it in the right way?

thanx for your explaination .. but u ain't understood what I meant yet !!!

Are you working with a laptop, which will often have built-in speakers that are truely intended for audio, or a desktop PC, which often just has a little speaker that's really intended for the POST code beeps you hear during startup or as a speaker alternative if you don't have a built-in or add-on sound card with *external* speakers.

Have you checked Preferences->Sounds->Devices? I'm not sure exactly what you would be looking for but see if anything there says anything about using the PC speaker as opposed to either a sound card or built-in sound system (in both cases these would have external speakers or be routed to the headphones when the headphones are plugged in).

You didn't state it, but I presume that when you vary the sound control, the volume does change in the headphones, just not on the PC's built-in speaker?

Try this.

Go to System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager

In the search window, type "kmix" and see if it is already installed. If not, install it. If you don't want to use it, you can remove it later, just follow along for now to see if it is your PC speaker that is enabled.

Check along the top menu bar of your desktop. There may already be a speaker shown there. Safe bet that that's how you're changing your volume right now. Right-click on the speaker icon and see if the menu say "Kmix" at the top. If not, open a terminal window (Applications->Accessories->Terminal) and type kmix at the prompt. A second speaker whould appear in the menu bar. Right-click on it and confirm that it is Kmix.

If it does say Kmix when you right-click on the icon, select "Show Mixer Window" At the bottom of the window that comes up, click on the button labelled "Mixer". You should get a small window that shows a number of volume controls.

Above the volume controls is a menu. Click on Settings->Configure Channels. Scroll through the list of sound sources and make sure "PC Speaker" does not have a check mark. I"m hoping that's the problem. If not, make a note of the other sound channels that have check marks and remove them one at a time until you only get sound from the headphones.

A slight correction: The "Configure channels" window changes what you see in the mixer itself. It's within the mixer itself that you can mute the PC speaker by putting a check mark under "Mute"