Our teachers have been switching from PC’s to Mac for the past two years and while the switch has been relatively good, there are still some pain points. One issue I came across today was a teacher who wanted to connect their laptop to a set of speakers, but the volume wasn’t loud enough.
The speakers have a knob which controls the volume. But what we sometimes miss is that the Macbook also has a volume control.
Actually the Macbook and iOS devices have a seperate volume control for each sound device. There is volume control for the internal speakers, and seperate volume control for each device that you connect to the Macbook or iOS device.
Sometimes teachers will adjust the volume on their Macbook, then connect the speakers, and wonder why the sound is so soft because they just turned up the volume all the way.
Do you see what happened? They turned the volume up for the internal speakers, but when they connected the other speakers, the volume was likely turned down.
What’s the solution to Soft Audio?
Make all your connections first. Then connect your Macbook or iOS device to the speakers. Then adjust the volume on the Macbook. And Adjust the volume on the speakers themselves.
The key is to connect everything first. But once you do this, the Macbook or iOS device will usually remember the volume setting for the device you connected and you won’t have to worry about this problem again.