E6400 "Ugly" Sound

Hi,

i just connected my external speakers to the E6400 Onboard Audio (IDT HD), and the sound is just horrible.
Well, i got little crackling like in the Thread "E6500 Crackling Audio", but much worser is the fact that the sound itsself is very "low" and sounds completely flat.

The IDT ControlPanel has no option to set equalizer options or something like that.

I guess this is a general problem with the E-Series Sound?

Does anyone have a solution for this problem?

I'm already thinking about using an external Sound Card like the "Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook, ExpressCard/54".
Anyone experiences with that, especially in E6400/E6500?

thanks in advance

greets

 

volume control -> advanced -> check PC Spk Mute

this will mute the internal speakers, but will make the sound output not be horrendous. not sure why dell did this...maybe because the internal speakers can't handle any bass at all. still, i dont know why this couldnt be automatic (automatically sense headphone jack plugged in and output non-crappy sound).

 

wow, that worked. what a difference.

thx alot

 

I deleted the IDT driver and use windows Vistas own sound driver. I get a pretty decent sound in both internal and external speakers now! And don't have to check and uncheck the external speaker!
I also have some pops in winamp and itunes. mostly on battery. I usually don't have anything when powered. And in Windows media player I haven't noticed audio problems

 

If you are thinking of an alternative sound solution, let me help you out: avoid Creative at all costs. Why? I would say check their forums... but Creative bans users and delete the thread if anyone complains, or ask about a driver/device related issue linked to what Creative wants to hide. I was one of them. You can check out more forums outside of Creative and people are not happy with the X-fi (including myself for the desktop PC)
Am I pissed because I was banned... well that was a very long time ago and I passed my anger out already. So here is a well thought out and research of reasons.

- People complain of cracking/popping sound in certain games or with certain motherboard chipset in combination with video cards and PCI-card sand mother board technology. It's a very picky card. In my case I don't have the issue.

- Bad driver, the driver structure itself is extremely heavy on the OS (XP/Vista (32 and 64-bit)), it really slows down windows start up time. Now for a desktop PC it's no real problem for more. But on a laptop... well... it could be.

- Badly designed chip. In reality the X-fi is still an Audigy. It's a tweaked audigy, with software emulated sound effects to give you the illusion of quality. This effects are, luckily, not rendered by your CPU, rather by the sound card processor. However, it's not the real thing.

- Claim of the X-Fi Christalization, does improve sound quality if turned on, but about 5% at best. And depending on your headphone/speakers, it might sound artificial (as it's not the real thing). So far KOSS, Sony and Logitech Z series speakers doesn't have this artificial sound fell with the card.

- Sound card can freeze. Yes, the card can freeze. The result is that the card doesn't play sound until you shut down your computer (reseting the computer doesn't really fix the problem for some (varies with the selected PSU and motherboard configuration)

Here is a better solution:
Check out the ASUS Xonar. I haven;t looked at reviews at their USB module , but the PCI-Express and PCI version for the computer is greatly better over the X-fi in all aspects. If this applies to the USB module for laptops, it might be pretty good choice.

 

How do you remove the IDT driver and install the Vista Driver? I'm sorry for my ignorance. I'm new to Vista and never played with drivers on XP.
Thanks,
Josh

 

Dell has released new drivers that have mostly taken care of this problem. Visit the Dell support page, type in your Service Tag, and download the newest audio driver for your OS.

 

Only on the Laptop Expresscard and entry level desktop X-Fi's - the others use the newer EMU chip (20K).

 

I didnt see any new IDT driver from DELL tho/

 

It's definitely different from the audio driver on the Dell Drivers CD. The newer one downloaded from the Dell Drivers page even has a different looking on-screen sound bar notification as well as the full SRS sound menu now available on default. The newest ones are 6.10.0.6159 A06