After a power failure PC no longer outputs sound, looking for a temporary USB soundcard.

[Cyber Akuma]

Had a power failure due to the snow here, when I turned my PC back on no sound was playing through the speakers anymore. The speakers themselves (Klipsch ProMedia 2.1) are working fine when I plugged them into the phone, and when I tried to output through the very very very horrible quality built in speakers in my HDMI monitor that worked... if you can call that mess working, but it's not outputting audio from the audio jack anymore. 
 
I need my audio working soon, so instead of spending days trying to see if the audio hardware is indeed fried somehow or if something else happened, I am just going to quickly order a USB soundcard/DAC and use that, at least until I can fix this (Or just keep the USB card as it's likely going to be better quality). 
 
Since the card is only temporary as this system itself is a temporary system until I can get my main PC which has a Sound BlasterX AE-5 I'm not looking for some high-end DAC that could be expensive. I just want something temporary for now that would be at least on par if not better than the motherboard audio from this old workstation. I see prices vary wildly from ones as suspiciously cheap as $10 all the way up to $200 and likely higher if I kept looking. 
 
Another problem I have though... just how much USB power do these devices use? I already have a lot of the USB ports on this system used up, and I am worried a higher-draw device will take too much power. Do any of them have an option of being powered externally? Or am I looking way too much into this? 
 
Any recommendations for what I am looking for? Preferably on the cheaper side if it's a decent one. Would love one that's $30 or less but if it's really worth it I can see doing one that's around $50, not looking to go into the triple digits.

[thevictor390]

My onboard audio has been dead since I got my motherboard used in 2017. I spent $20 on an ASUS Xonar DG PCI card and it's fine. Nothing special, just replacement audio that does the job.

[Cyber Akuma]

Would prefer a USB device for now over a PCIe card. Also that card you mentioned is PCI, not PCIe, not much computers these days have PCI ports anymore.

[Cocococo]

If you just need a temp solution then Fosi DS1 is what i'd look at, but if you can't find any then Apple USB-C dongle (Abigail CX 1993 outside of US) should be good enough USB A to Female Type C works if you have no USB C ports on your build

[BillBill]

34 minutes ago, Cyber Akuma said:

Had a power failure due to the snow here, when I turned my PC back on no sound was playing through the speakers anymore. The speakers themselves (Klipsch ProMedia 2.1) are working fine when I plugged them into the phone, and when I tried to output through the very very very horrible quality built in speakers in my HDMI monitor that worked... if you can call that mess working, but it's not outputting audio from the audio jack anymore. 
 
I need my audio working soon, so instead of spending days trying to see if the audio hardware is indeed fried somehow or if something else happened, I am just going to quickly order a USB soundcard/DAC and use that, at least until I can fix this (Or just keep the USB card as it's likely going to be better quality). 
 
Since the card is only temporary as this system itself is a temporary system until I can get my main PC which has a Sound BlasterX AE-5 I'm not looking for some high-end DAC that could be expensive. I just want something temporary for now that would be at least on par if not better than the motherboard audio from this old workstation. I see prices vary wildly from ones as suspiciously cheap as $10 all the way up to $200 and likely higher if I kept looking. 
 
Another problem I have though... just how much USB power do these devices use? I already have a lot of the USB ports on this system used up, and I am worried a higher-draw device will take too much power. Do any of them have an option of being powered externally? Or am I looking way too much into this? 
 
Any recommendations for what I am looking for? Preferably on the cheaper side if it's a decent one. Would love one that's $30 or less but if it's really worth it I can see doing one that's around $50, not looking to go into the triple digits.

Make sure you check the current default audio device and it's output. 

[Cyber Akuma]

23 minutes ago, Cocococo said:

If you just need a temp solution then Fosi DS1 is what i'd look at, but if you can't find any then Apple USB-C dongle (Abigail CX 1993 outside of US) should be good enough USB A to Female Type C works if you have no USB C ports on your build

 

Those are the $10 headphone adapters right? Do you know if you can you buy them in electronics stores too? And are they still $10 there or only online? And yeah, this is an older system, no USB-C. It's a 3rd gen Xeon.

 

9 minutes ago, BillBill said:

Make sure you check the current default audio device and it's output. 

 

I did. I tried swapping the audio to my HDMI-connected monitor and that worked, swapping it back to the on-board audio though, nothing. I can even see in sound settings that the bar next to the device is not displaying any green/red bars at all when audio is playing, even when I right-click and choose test, but it displays them for the monitor.

 

... my monitor sounds like someone trying to route a 50 year old AM radio through a can-and-string "telephone" though so using that is not an option.

 

(Very confused why this happened, both my sound and my network switch died from the outage, but everything else seems to be fine, and all of this was connected through a hefty UPS. You'd think if there was a surge the UPS would have gotten damaged first, or at least along with the other components. Maybe it's just a coincidence, or at least in the case of my sound something software-wise got corrupted)

[BillBill]

1 minute ago, Cyber Akuma said:

 

Those are the $10 headphone adapters right? Do you know if you can you buy them in electronics stores too? And are they still $10 there or only online? And yeah, this is an older system, no USB-C. It's a 3rd gen Xeon.

 

 

I did. I tried swapping the audio to my HDMI-connected monitor and that worked, swapping it back to the on-board audio though, nothing. I can even see in sound settings that the bar next to the device is not displaying any green/red bars at all when audio is playing, even when I right-click and choose test, but it displays them for the monitor.

 

... my monitor sounds like someone trying to route a 50 year old AM radio through a can-and-string "telephone" though so using that is not an option.

 

(Very confused why this happened, both my sound and my network switch died from the outage, but everything else seems to be fine, and all of this was connected through a hefty UPS. You'd think if there was a surge the UPS would have gotten damaged first, or at least along with the other components. Maybe it's just a coincidence, or at least in the case of my sound something software-wise got corrupted)

Yes a surge can mess up audio drivers. Heck not long ago a Windows driver update messed up my sound and I had thought the powered speakers went bad. 

[Thaldor]

Try to wipe and reinstall the audio drivers (seems to be kind of rare Windows "feature" to F up audio device identification and start using wrong drivers), it is not once or twice that my Sound Blaster Z is recognized as Reacon3D after unsafe Windows shutdown and every time it's reinstalling the drivers because for some reason Windows is unable to reidentify the card.

Also, if your monitor has speakers and HDMI-audio input, it very likely also has headphone output (at least I don't remember ever having seen HDMI monitor with speakers without one, I have seen few without speakers having one thou).

[Cyber Akuma]

On 1/12/2024 at 5:17 PM, Thaldor said:

Try to wipe and reinstall the audio drivers (seems to be kind of rare Windows "feature" to F up audio device identification and start using wrong drivers)

 

That actually did it.