Left audio not working

pickarooney

I have this weird problem which manifests itself in the following way:

With speakers plugged in, the left one plays at a barely audible volume, the right one is fine.
With headphones plugged in and the jack pushed right in, there is sound only in the right ear. If I plug the jack partly in I can hear in both ears; however this does not cut the speakers off and teh plug falls out easily.

I've now tried three speaker systems and the jacks both on the front of my PC and on the speakers themselves and I get the exact same result.

I've come to the conclusion that there must be an audio configuration problem. Audio configuration has always been a major pain in the arse for me with linux as I can never get the results I want by anything other than messing about with the various dials and sliders.

Is there anything obvious that I might have set up wrongly which would make the left audio channel cut out (almost) completely on the speakers and also on headphones?

For info, I have one single (green) audio cable coming from the sound card at the back into the speaker woofer and both speakers are connected via one cable into the woofer.

Johnboy1951

Before even checking the hardware I would first check that the Balance is not set to one side only.

I use aumix or alsamixer in a terminal to check all available options.

Are you sure you have the correct sized jack plug on your headphones for the socket in the PC?
Sounds to me like the plug is too small ....