External speakers do not work when I plug them into the headphone jack...

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My speakers do not work when I plug them into the “headphone jack” on the Plugable. I go to the Audio controls in my Control Panel and there is no choice for the “USB jack” to control the audio. What may be the problem here? Other than that, everything else works fine - I have a monitor, printer and wireless keyboard/mouse reciever all working fine.

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Hi Darrell,

Thanks for posting your question here, we’ll be glad to help! A couple of question to help us narrow down the issue:

  1. If you plug in the speakers directly to your computer does audio work?
  2. Do you have a simple audio device like a pair of headphones you can plug in to the docking station to verify if it works that way?

Thanks for any details you can provide here and we’ll figure out next steps.

Thanks for your patience,
Ellen

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Hi Ellen,

  1. Yes, when I plug the speakers directly into my laptop headphone jack, the speakers work. My computer is a Toshiba Portege R835, running Windows 7 Home Premium.

  2. When I plug a pair of headphones into the Plugable headphone jack, the headphones also do not work. However, when I plug those headphones into the laptop jack, they do work.

I’ve tried shutting down my computer, unpluging the USB on the Plugable and pluging back in, killing the power to the Plugable and and then pluging it back in… the headphone jack doesn’t seem to be responding.

Let me know if there’s anything else I could do.

Thanks,
Darrell

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Hi Darrell,

Thanks for doing those tests! Just to re-confirm, with the speakers plugged in, if you go to Control Panel>Sound, do you see USB Multimedia Audio Device listed?

If not, please e-mail us your Amazon Order ID to support@plugable.com and we’ll be happy to troubleshoot further!

Thanks,
Ellen

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Hi Ellen & Darren,

I am also experiencing the same exact problem of the headphone jack on my UD-160-A USB 2.0 docking station not working. While my computer, an ASUS Zenbook UX31E-DH72, is plugged into the docking station everything works except when I try to plug in either headphones or speakers to the headphone jack on the docking station. If I plug in headphones or speakers into the headphone jack on the docking station and play any audio, the audio is played through my laptops internal speakers and nothing else. Also if I plug in those same headphones or speakers into the headphone jack on my laptop, either when it is connected to the docking station or not, the audio will play through both of the speakers and headphones no problem. I have also looked through the control panel at the “Devices and Printers” tab and seen under the “Unspecified” category it shows the “USB Multimedia Audio Device” and says that the devices status is “This device is working properly.” On one final note, I do remember that the headphone jack on the docking station did work for a month or so with both headphones and speakers but then one day stopped working and hasn’t worked since. I have no idea what’s the problem.

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Thanks,
Conor

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For the benefit of anyone who is interested, the reply to Conor’s question has been posted on http://support.plugable.com/plugable/…

Roze