help with my jukebox sound

[kjbalto]

I am using my laptop in my jukebox, with an elo touchscreen and the mameroom design.  The problem I am having, that I didn't realize until now, is that if a song plays a duet, I can't hear the second person singing.  It's extremely low.  For example, I have an Elvis duet cd, and I can't hear the person singing with him.  Do I have to get another sound card, to fix this? 

[Kevin Mullins]

Does your laptop output "stereo" ?
What are you using to plug into the laptop to output the audio ? (1/8 stereo plug ?)
May be just an audio setting somewhere.

[Dermbrian]

Here's a thread in a different forum that discusses options for summing two outputs (Left, Right) into a mono signal.  I do this to play my personal electronics through a mono amp I've put into a single speaker console radio that I've 'repurposed'.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f6/stereo-mono-converter-157210/

Second best,and the way just about all subwoofers combine the left and right channels for a single sub is the resistor mixer.No more than three 10K resistors and with no signal losses since you are combining two signals (adding or sum) which means a signal increase which is then divided by 2 hence unity as the end result

LEFT CH To one end of a 10K resistor,RIGHT CH To one end of another 10K resistor,other end of both tied together,a third 10K resistor with one end to the junction of R1 and R2 with the other end to circuit ground,MONO output from this three resistor junction to the output jack.....done ! And all for about $5

[kjbalto]

I don't know what my laptop puts out.  Is that what my problem is? If it's not stereo, I won't get left and right?  Woudl buying another sound card fix this?

[Kevin Mullins]

Well, if it's a laptop, then I doubt you have many options. (ie sound cards)

The problem is we don't know enough about your setup to really tell what to look at.

What kind of laptop?
You are going from the laptop to what ?
Using what kind of cables, etc.?
What kind of speaker setup do have in the jukebox?

[richms]

Firstly I would plug some headphones into the laptop and check you get sound out both of them, it could either be the mixer in windows is set to one side or a fault with the hardware.

If the headphones are all ok then start to look at the cables to your amplifier - one may have a break in it.

But surely you would notice half of your speakers not doing anything?

[kjbalto]

Sorry, I should've explained more.  I have my laptop inside my jukebox.  I'm using a motorcycle amp, connected to my laptop, with two speakers connected to the amp.  Both speakers play fine, that's not my problem.  I noticed in one song, that was a duet, that the second person's voice was extremly low, you almost can't hear.  That's when I realized that my speakers weren't playing everything properly.  I'll test out the headphones and see if I can hear it on there.  I didn't think of that.  Thanks guys.

[richms]

A motorcycle amp? WTF? Are they putting sounds on cycles now?

Also try opening the mixer and using the pan control - you have to go options - advanced in the xp mixer to get it to show - but no mixer problems would make one half of the song come out both speakers.

The other option is that it could just be that file was encoded by some muppet that stuffed it up somehow...