Terrible sound on M17x R3

Hello,

I've had the r3 for a few days and the sound is very poor. If the volume is up more than 50% (which doesn't sound that loud) the chasis vibrates and the sound is muddy. I have $500 laptop that sounds much better. I see that the case says Klipsch all over it but it's almost like the sound is coming from an internal PC speaker. IS there something I need to do to enable the klipsch speakers? It's almost like I'm in some power saving mode like there is for the ATI discreet graphics.

 

sounds busted to me! the sound is not THAT great, but it isnt nearly as bad as you describe.

 

Sound is not as good as they said it was for sure. i have a friend who has a asus lap top with my sound volume maxed out and his you can't even hear mine. (sad) you would think that is one of the up-grades they would have improved on.

 

Try running the IDT control panel and configuring your equalizer.

 

Be happy that yours has sound. =p Mine has a bad mobo, and it's making it so it thinks that headphones are plugged in all the time. I'm gonna have to get a new mobo for it, which is somewhat of a hassle. But I did find a workaround that let's me use the speakers, I just have to redo it every time I plug headphnes in, or restart the laptop, and I think the sound on it is qute good personally. Definitely one of the only laptops that I don't mind not using headphones with on a regular basis.
Oh, and another thing, I saw someone else on here whose speaker grille was pushing back on the speaker, and making it sound really bad. That could maybe be the problem? Just throwing it out there.

 

Actually that makes a lot of sense. Since the whole shell buzzes and vibrates, this could be the cause. These aren't crazy volume levels that would warrant the distortion I'm hearing. I will take a look.

 

This is fixable. Plug and unplug that fiber optic adapter on the right side where the fiber optical port is really fast and it will fix itself. You probably plugged headphones into the optical port on accident, happened to at least 3 people I saw so far and my fix helped them.

 

Man, I feel bad for the op, cuz sound on mine is awesome. I'm very surprised how the speakers are mounted at the front, but it sounds like surround sound even on low volume (1 click of the media bar's volume up button). At 50%, it sounds really good too. Haven't had the chance to bump it all the way up, cuz there's been no opportunity to.

 

OP just needs to mess with the IDT equalizer. Mine sounds good too.

 

Speaking of which, when I go to control panel, and click on IDT Audio Control Panel, a small window pops up saying "Cannot find .startup file!"... What's going on here?

 

IDT sucks, C:\Program Files\IDT\WDM\idtcpl64.cpl

Enjoy

 

COOL! Now if only I knew how to set the proper settings in the EQ to get better sound. Any suggestions?

 

Yeah I don't think my issue is with the EQ. It's not a sublte issue with the sound. I'm not even an audiophile that can hear a mouse farting in the background of a recording. It sounds like a $5 radio on an AM station. I'm not sure where I would need to check for the speaker issue of coming in contact with the casing\grill. Just superficially on the outside, I don't see where this would be happening. Do I need to open up the case?

 

That really a shame Klipsch is supposed to make some decent speakers. And a large 17 inch laptop of this quality should have very nice speakers. I would be rly mad if it didn't sound great

 

Mine sounds good as well. Not extremely loud, but the quality of the sound is excellent.

 

The envy 14's headphone output is superb. My westone 3 IEM's sound absolutely fantastic out of it. The beats audio in the envy 14 isn't just hype it does produce great sound. I wish someone could compare the headphone output jack of the m17xr3 vs the ency beats audio output.

 

Dell is coming out to replace my speakers. Hopefully that will fix the distortion/buzzing I'm hearing.

 

I definitely tried that multiple times, and had no luck at all with that. Mine just refuses to work correctly.

 

Good luck with that. Hopefully it was just bad speakers, or something pushing on them.

 

Well, the dell guy came out and replaced the speakers. I was very surprised to see how tiny these things are. The drivers are about the size of your thumbnail and they have no mass at all. On the tiny speaker box there was a label that said 5w. I realize that this is a laptop and you can't have big monster speakers, but these things are seriously cheesy. I think klipsch just licensed their name and dell grabbed these out of the parts bin. The poor sound I'm afraid is just these speakers. The rattle\buzzing is still present after replacing the speakers. The left side of the case buzzes at 50% volume. The dell tech thinks that it's the fact that there's no insulation around the speakers and the little speaker box is rattling against the case. The left speaker box is a lot smaller and lighter than the right one so that's maybe why the rattle happens there. As some suggested, if did adjust the EQ so that there is 0 bass, there would be less rattling (along with neutered sound). At the stock, out of the box levels, it's like having a mosquito humm the song you are listening to. Dell wants me to send it back to them to work on it for 10 days. I think I'll just never use the speakers in this thing.

 

Just tell them that you want a system exchange or complete refund (after which you can re-buy a proper r3). If they give you a hard time, read them the terms of your warranty - the little black book that came with the system.

They hate it when I read the whole warranty aloud.

 

That's sad. I'm watching al-jazeera news right now on 50% volume, and it sounds GREAT. Bumped it to 100% and it sounds GREAT too! (Stock volume and sound settings btw).

 

The Dell tech thought it was due to the fact that I have an SSD drive. Apparently a harddrive would dampen the area where there is buzzing. But what does he know. Half my lights don't work on the case any more and the scroll lock/delete button is broken.

 

I lol'd

There's not much that I find more amusing than how "techs" try to pass off hardware issues as normal or related to something completely ridiculous (but not their fault, hence not having to do more work / lose money). Well, one thing that is certainly more humorous is that most people buy their excuses.

At work:
boss - fk! I just lost 3 hours of work because autocad crashed when I did a regen right before saving!
tech - oh no, it must be your $3,000 Quadro FX GPU (that is actually working 100% fine). Here, I'll replace it for you FREE OF CHARGE!
boss - wow you're the best! I'm glad we pay you $12,000 a month to do nothing but make it seem like you walk on water

next day:
tech - I have your new Radeon HD 6870, let's install it!
*installs it*
tech - ok, it's in! I just want to let you know that because this hardware was installed free of charge (even though it costs $2,500 less than your first GPU, and I'm not refunding the difference ZING) you'll need to be careful; don't regen 15mb autocad files while zoomed in incredibly close ok?
boss - ok! I'm so happy! I love you more than Jesus

Real problem:
Boss's files are so f'd up that they will crash on anything. Autocad files are typically >1mb.

Tech made a nice $2,500 while looking like the bees knees.

 

You may have a separate issue, IDT lets you specify, even when it detects an Optical cable plugged in, to use the PC speakers or the Optical port.

 

I have a similar problem with my M17x R3--the left speaker buzzes a bit at 50%. I noticed when I put a little pressure on the left side, it goes away leading me to think it was a mechanical thing as Jonx's earlier post suggested.

After I called tech support, they basically said it was a known problem with the model and they had no idea how to fix it.

I was then asked to send it in for an unspecified amount of time for them to mess around until they got it to stop.

Needless to say, I said 'No thank you'

At this point I'm just going to return for a full refund before my 21 days are up if they don't send me a replacement.

I'm pretty disappointed that the joy of getting my first Alienware is already getting killed.

 

I'm not going to lie; to acute ears you'll definitely hear the chassis rattle at certain frequencies as well as at high volumes. Its especially noticible in skype calls since there's no music to drown out the rattling whereas games have plenty of sounds happening at all time to make it unnoticible.

I think its because the speakers are actually set inside the chassis whereas more laptops have them almost right on the surface. My first impression upon playing music on the R3 was "Who put my speakers in a tunnel?"

I didn't have very high expectations for the speakers anyways, but it'd sure be nice if Klipsh did a little more engineering on them; the XPS's JBL sounds far superior.

 

Has anyone tried to dampen the vibration by adding something (a little bit of foam) so it stops the buzzing? Or does my lack of electronic expertise risk causing something worse from happening?

 

Just an update after a few calls to Dell, it looks like I'll be getting a replacement mailed to me. Hopefully it will be free of issues as opposed to a new set of issues.

 

GJ. Let us know how it is. My replacement was supposed to arrive tomorrow 4/9, but obviously it aint, due to yet another "delay," which the csr guy apologizes yet again for

 

Just an update on this issue. I called dell and they said this was a known problem and they were working on a fix. This was a few months ago. In the meantime, I fixed my own issue. There's a metal grate in front of the speakers with little honey comb holes in it. If you hook something like a paper clip or a pen into the holes, you can bend/pull the grate toward you. Just a milimeter or two does the trick. I needed to do this in several places on my left speaker. This reduced the buzzing 99%. I ended up breaking a couple of the little holes but I'm happy the buzzing is gone. I think someone mentioned they moved the grill away from the speaker in an earlier thread but I couldn't find any instructions. It's amazing how a little thing like the grill being too close to the speaker could make the whole case rattle.

 

I just took the whole thing apart and padded it slightly with some soft material. Did the trick. Can have the volume up to full with no rattle.