Hi,

I checked the cable you mentioned, I even dusted it off and reseated it on both sides. Booted up the Centris, put in a CD...still didn't play it as loud as it used to, and the alert sounds are still loud and clear.

But an idea just occurred to me. For a while the Centris was without a floppy drive, since the original was damaged and even screwed up the system until I removed it. While it was floppy drive-less, it played CDs so that I could hear every note. I also noticed that the sound originated from inside the computer, near or on the CD drive. Is that where the speakers are?

But I believe that ever since I put in that replacement floppy drive (which works great) the sound may have been blocked by the new hardware inside the computer. And the reason that I can hear the alert sounds is that they're loud to begin with. And, experimenting further, I found that some CDs play louder than others, depending on how they were recorded. Does this idea seem well-founded?

Thanks,

-Apostrophe