Speaker feedback on a laptop

I have a new Sony Vaio VGN-FE38GP laptop.It has recently developed a
feedback problem. If I turn the volume up a little more than halfway
it screeches at me. It seemed to coincide with me using a pair of
cheap external speakers that plugged into a USB and not using any
other power. Could I have damaged anything? Is there any cure for this
problem, please?

On 1 May, 13:25, Grinder <grin...@no.spam.maam.com> wrote:
> Pete L wrote:
> > I have a new Sony Vaio VGN-FE38GP laptop.It has recently developed a
> > feedback problem. If I turn the volume up a little more than halfway
> > it screeches at me. It seemed to coincide with me using a pair of
> > cheap external speakers that plugged into a USB and not using any
> > other power. Could I have damaged anything? Is there any cure for this
> > problem, please?
>
> It's unclear to me from your posting: Are you trying to use the built-in
> microphone? If not, user your volume control (probably in you systray)
> to mute it.

Thanks for the quick reply! Problem solved - I have muted the
microphone and no more feedback. I'm not too clear about this now.
Having checked the muting box for the microphone what happens when I
want to use, say, Skype. Do I have to uncheck it again? The two
sockets on the front of the laptop are for headphones and microphone.
I plugged the speakers into the headphone socket. Presumably this is
correct?

Pete L wrote:
> On 1 May, 13:25, Grinder <grin...@no.spam.maam.com> wrote:
>> Pete L wrote:
>>> I have a new Sony Vaio VGN-FE38GP laptop.It has recently developed a
>>> feedback problem. If I turn the volume up a little more than halfway
>>> it screeches at me. It seemed to coincide with me using a pair of
>>> cheap external speakers that plugged into a USB and not using any
>>> other power. Could I have damaged anything? Is there any cure for this
>>> problem, please?
>> It's unclear to me from your posting: Are you trying to use the built-in
>> microphone? If not, user your volume control (probably in you systray)
>> to mute it.
>
> Thanks for the quick reply! Problem solved - I have muted the
> microphone and no more feedback. I'm not too clear about this now.
> Having checked the muting box for the microphone what happens when I
> want to use, say, Skype. Do I have to uncheck it again? The two
> sockets on the front of the laptop are for headphones and microphone.
> I plugged the speakers into the headphone socket. Presumably this is
> correct?
>

If the software does this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_cancellation

then you might have the opportunity to use speakers
and microphone. I don't know if Skype has a feature
like that or not. Otherwise, using a headset would
isolate the "speaker output" from the microphone, and
prevent the feedback.

I see some comments on the issue here -

http://www.skype.com/help/guides/callquality/

Paul