MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
GF has just bought a Dell laptop (Studio 1537) which is pretty nice in most respects EXCEPT the pish sound quality from the inbuilt speakers. (It sounds great with headphones or external speakers). She wants to listen to radio programmes on iplayer and such like and carry it around the house without the faff of external speakers. Of course, it's all my fault...
Anyone got one of these? Any solutions?
So far I've uninstalled the IDT driver and installed the default vista one instead which improved the volume level but I've lost the equaliser and it still sounds tinny.
Cheers,
SC
Bad timing - competing with the missus/fella thread...
I've a Dell (Inspiron, not Studio, but much of a muchness).
Very happy over the past 12 months - apart from the sound.
Yes it is pish, and it is a known 'feature': A background 'crackling'. Is that the same as you?
I can only hear it when using 'phones and the volume is low.
There are a number of forums which talk about earthing/suppression and the like but
TBH, I find it OK once the sound is cranked up.
Another sound-related Dell fact: Dell take the moral high ground regarding DRM and, as such, won't support any 'direct-from-soundcard' recording.
I get round this (only when it is legal, of course) by running a cable from the line-out to the line-in.
They are completely useless and drivers wont improve the sound quality because its the poor quality speakers which are at fault.
I managed to return mine for a full refund...
Speakers are poor quality on those !
I agree, with the above comments, luckily my wife has Dells for work and every single one has had useless sound from the internal speakers, so I knew what to expect from them and avoided them.
My old Toshiba had Harmon Kardon speakers and was great and my new Acer has Dolby home theater and is good too.
Sorry it doesn't help your current situation with the Dell, but I'd be looking at returning it as per Evil-Knievel as unsuitable for us.
Thanks for responses guys.
She's bought herself a set of £15 speakers...
(Pity cos otherwise it's a nice laptop - I'll be testing to see if I can get internet access in my shed later)
I have this problem on my Dell Vostro and I actually put it down to the Windows drivers as in Ubuntu the sound is absolutely fine, I found that even with external speakers the sound quality in Windows is naff.
I've tried to find some better drivers for Windows on several occasions but couldn't although I did find, curiously, that running a Virtual Machine with Ubuntu on it and playing music through that played fine :s.
In the end I bought myself a Terratec Aureon Dual USB soundcard which is absolutely top notch, has line in, line out and optical out too.