New member in Wales, UK

[herbertlemons]

Hi all, I've just joined the Surface Forums because I decided to upgrade my Chuwi tablet to a SP4. I've been blind for 9 years so use the NVDA screen reader software, to manage anything I need to do on my laptop and tablets. I live in south Wales

I found the forum because I was looking for some advice on a problem with my SP4 behaving inconsistenly with headphones and external speakers — an issue I found many people having in this forum!

It's pretty crucial for me to sort this out because my debut poetry pamphlet was published by Cinnamon Press in January, so I'm doing a few readings and, being a blind person with a rubbish memory, I use the screen reader on the tablet to alternate poems with the ones I've managed to memorise. My most recent event was last Monday and I didn't have the confidence in the SP4 outputing its sound through the external speakers so I stuck with using my old Chuwi tablet.

Looking forward to picking up tips and finding help amongst the forum posts. I'm also more than happy to offer advice to anybody who would like to know more about using talking devices to assist with problems reading text

Giles Turnbull

 

[hughlle]

Welcome to the forum Giles. Good to have another Brit on the forum.

Have you got the surface fully updated? Is it a specific piece of software which is not working with the speakers, or just in general? I'm afraid I can't be of too much help as I've never come across this speaker issue.

 

[MickeyLittle]

Welcome to the forum Giles. I have the Surface Book so can't help with the SP4 speaker issue but be sure you post your question on the SP4 forum as well since few members read the new member thread.

 

[herbertlemons]

I believe my Surface is up to date — the audio drivers for sure report that they are the latest. I don't think it's a software issue either because the problem occurs with my screen reader as well as the Microsoft Narrator one.

I searched the forum and there are several results where people find when they plug in headphones or an external speaker to the headphone jack, that the Surface's internal speakers keep on sounding. The recommended solution seems to be making sure that headphones are set as the default audio playback device ... though my audio devices configuration doesn't seem to have any way to set which device should be used as the default.

What confuses me is that the headphones / external speaker will start off outputing sound without anything coming through the internal speaker, but then has a tendency to revert back to the internal speaker, sometimes with the external sound present, but more often than not only coming through the internal speaker.

I've only had my SP4 for just over a week, so this may be teething troubles that sort themselves out as I get more familiar with it

Giles

Welcome to the forum Giles. Good to have another Brit on the forum.

Have you got the surface fully updated? Is it a specific piece of software which is not working with the speakers, or just in general? I'm afraid I can't be of too much help as I've never come across this speaker issue.