MSI GT72S Subwoofer Installation [M18xR2]

No doubt, the MSI GT72S subwoofer is one of the best in a laptop. However, the enclosure is big and most laptops cannot fit it without modifying the chassis.

My HDD interposer cable had failed and I had switched to a single mSATA drive, leaving lots of room in the HDD compartment.

I ordered the MSI GT72S subwoofer on ebay. The connector was the same as the Alienware M18x subwoofer, but the wire was too short. So I cut the wires, and used CAT5 cable to extend the wire.

Overall, the bass is better and the laptop seems louder. I'll compare directly with my brother's M18xR2 running the original subwoofer later.

I closed the port hole because otherwise the subwoofer would bottom out!

Testing phase, I was able to reach just barely without removing the palm rest:




I ran an extension wire from the connector to the HDD bay:



Connecting everything together, the subwoofer fit perfectly:



For the finishing touches, I added foam under and above the subwoofer. Sounds good so far.

I need to find my soldering iron and solder because the wires are a bit loose.

I have turned off trustudio (surround/bass/crystallizer) and use only equalizer now. Sounds much better.

 

@Danishblunt here is some proof, this subwoofer is way better than an l702x one.
You don't even need to do driver mods for it, yes this is an alienware and yours is a clevo but in my clevo I just changed the eq and turned sound blaster off and I was getting clean loud bass.

These subwoofers do bottom out and now you have proof, you'll have more later when I do the mod too.

Overall @ssj92 nice work. Rep +2.

 

@DaMafiaGamer Nope. If you don't mod the drivers the notebook will sound like trash. It needs finetuning in the 50hz and lower department, and the frequencies from 125 - 250 are messed up, not only that but there are also some problems around the 1 - 2k range, which makes the notebook sound like a "notebook". It's hard to describe but I'll try anyways.

When you listen to music on a notebook most notebooks have a very specific sound to it, it doesn't sound tinny but it sounds like a notebook.


When you take this video for instance, it's extremely weak because almost all microphones focus on the sound and filter echos, background noise and such away, making it hard to hear it but you can still here it on that video in the beginning. When you listen to a notebook, it will sound like a notebook, the speakers are not very clear and have some odd tone to it, a radio or a bluetooth speaker sounds much more clear. that exacly problem is caused by issues in the 1k - 2k range.

@ssj92 nice, would like to hear the difference between your bros and your Alienware.

 

Okay , forgot to mention. The whole reason I had done this mod was because my brother's M18x sub sounded way better than my M18x sub. So upon putting them side to side, mine is definitely much better than before, but his is also about the same as mine now.

However, my laptop sounds better. I don't know how to describe it but the bass and especially the other higher frequencies have gotten much better on mine. The sub seems to play more than just bass frequencies. My brother thought my right speaker wasn't working because the left side is loud (because the sub is on the left in the HDD bay).

Also another thing I need to try. My brother is using stock drivers. I am using J95's modded drivers which I believe limit the frequency response. So I will try going back to stock and see what that does.

Just realized the video is garbage (thanks iOS 12 beta...). Next week when I come back home I'll use my DSLR to record.

https://streamable.com/oytmq

 

Exactly the laptop actually sounds like a speaker system, there is more clarity in certain areas. It's not only a good subwoofer but it's also a very good speaker for mids. For highs it is ok but it will probably damage the speaker over a long period of time.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention it makes some laptops much louder than they used to be, the stereo affect doesn't work as much.

 

You see now what I'm talking about. Depite doing a hardware mod with a much superior subwoofer, you still can't reach levels you thought u'd reach. I don't hear a big difference between the systems to be honest. Your sub is playing mids, hence the sound is now very imbalanced and on the side where the sub is.

What are the videos name?

Also I can show you some songs which test the system:

Spoiler

(very good for testing extreme lows)
(testing your lows and mids)
(highs and mids)

Also which one is yours? I assume it's the right one.

 

The laptop does sound like a speaker system , it did before too though but now it sounds better. These laptops have very good sound overall. Now I'm thinking if it's worth replacing the L and R speakers too.

I forgot to mention, mine is left, brother's is on right. Yes sound isn't really balanced now.

I'll try stock drivers later and see if that helps. In person mine has much more dynamic sound now and the bass sounds cleaner.

When I hooked up the sub to my receiver before putting it into my laptop it was flexing hard. Maybe I should have left the port open. The laptop definitely cannot provide enough power or is being limited in the drivers somehow.

 

Wait what? I thought it was the other way around because honestly the right one does sound more full.

Honestly this confuses me because the right one does reach lows which the left one doesn't.

 

Nice to know I'm not the only one that listens to drake.

 

@ssj92
Here is an example of a GT 72 subwoofer being utilized correcly:

It's really weird listening to the songs in your video. It's as if low frequencies are missing or toned extremely down, while the "popping" from the sub is waaaaaaaaaaay out of proportion. It's weird to listen to, it sounds like my clevo when the drivers were stock.

 

The low frequencies aren;t as strong as they should be because I plugged the port hole. Honestly I should have just left it open.

Though I must say the lows still sound much better and louder the this sub compared to my brother's.

I think my phone just does a bad job recording the audio because in person it sounds better.

I still have to try stock drivers. Still running J95 driver mod.

Do you think you can look into my drivers and see if there's anything you can do? Similar to what you did for your laptop?

https://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER01776896M/1/Audio_Driver_4T7P8_WN_1.00.19_A00.EXE

 

I mean, the bass on the right notebook is better. tho just by a little. There are some mids the notebook on the right does play (which the left one doesnt at all) also the lows are more present on the right as well, even tho not by much. So I'm a bit confused if either you meant yours is on the right or if you might be a little biased towards your system. At least when you go ahead and listen to your video, you'll hear that your brothers is better, especially at the 2nd song.

Are those both M18x R2s? because I find it extremely odd that apparently one system is much superior to the other on stock.

About the driver I can't do much, I need the notebook in front of me to be able to finetune the system, also it takes a long long time.

 

Yes both are exactly the same model. I also found it weird but it's true, one had a much better subwoofer than the other from the factory, idk why.

My brother's plays mids better but the high end and low end on mine is definetly better. I think I chose wrong songs to showcase it but yeah.

Sad nothing can't be done with the drivers. I'll update the post when I try the stock drivers. It's finals week next week so might take awhile..

 

Keep us updated. As far as I can tell the lows are better on your brothers, it is stronger @ the 150 - 250hz range. I cant say to much about lower than the 150hz range, seems both are rather the same really.

Once you updated the drivers, try some songs that are more high, mid and low heavy like I posted above. That will give uss and most importantly you a better idea on how the sound is.

 

The clevo P870dm-g has absolutely appalling bass, do clevo even try to make good speakers. As of now the tornado f5 I have actually has a good range of bass that goes down to 60hz.

@Danishblunt ill need to learn how to mod drivers cause this type of bass is literally unacceptable. The whole low end range is missing.

 

I know right? The hardware is good, look at the sub and speakers themselves, they are, for a notebook, not bad at all, but the drivers are an absolute disaster.

When I looked at my P157SM and my P375SM-A I was shocked to find out how bad the sound was. At first I thought it was the speakers, but later realized when looking at them, they weren't all that bad, so I spend around 1.5 years to teach myself how to mod/write audio drivers and started doing my own work. On stock lwws are almost non existant, mids are oversaturated, highs are quiet, the whole sound is abysmal to say the least.

Everytime people with a clevo tell me how great their sound is, I can never help but to chuckle. I have a MSI GT 72, I know what sound can come out of a notebook, the difference is downright hilarious to say the least.

 

It literally ruins the experience of the laptop for me, I'm not surprised that the msi is better. Dynaudio know there stuff and msi actually know how to make drivers.

It seems like clevo were like well we have made a sound driver why not use the same sound driver on all clevos. No one will notice right? WRONG the speakers in this thing have a high watt rating too but they cant get as loud or as bassy as a eurocom tornado f5. And that's a 15.6 inch laptop too. It makes me mad literally that they don't give a ****.
From such a bulky laptop you would expect some table rattling bass lol like the alienware 18 I have (dell for once did SOMETHING right in the new edition alienware 18).

 

Well no, that's why I never recommend Clevo. You see Clevo is not a finished notebook, all clevo does is sell barebones to resellers, which resellers can rebrand and resell. Everything is absolute barebones, fitting is bad, software is barebones etc.

This is to be expected. With this in mind I bought my P375SM-A, because I wanted something I can keep modding. Once you tried an MSI GT 75 you will even give your M18x is a funny look and ask yourself why only MSI seem to give a crap about audio.

 

Yep the gt75 is the best at the moment in terms of subwoofer range and loudness. I had a gt780dxr as my first laptop. When I first played music on it I thought I was playing to through my speaker system. The audio was well balanced and had very good bass. I was literally astonished, to this day not even the alienware 18 has that much bass. I have yet to hear a laptop like that one, it sounds better than the gt72vr not sure about the gt75vr

 

Welcome to the club, the 780DX ruined my audio experiences on notebooks as well. Since then I cannot have a non MSI GT in my home ._.

The GT72S is the one I have. Its superior to the GT780DX, especially because you have a config file in nahmic which you can adjust all the frequencies.
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=262248.0

If you have a GT72, play with those settings, you will surely get a better sound than your 780DX.

 

MSI no longer sells the GT72 right? GT75 replaced it completely? I actually prefer the look of the Gt72 over the Gt75 personally.

 

Yeah the msi gt72 looks slimmer and less ugly lol.

 

The thing I don't understand about msi is why do they make their cpus bga and their gpus mxm?

Surely it would be easier to do it the other way round?

Making the cpu removable and GPU bga. I know no one would like that but having bga in the first place is a bad thing anyway.

 

It's simple really, because CPU simply don't matter for gamers as much as it used to. If you have an old sandy bridge 2600K, you would to this day have no real reason to upgrade to a 8700K.

You will only gain more FPS in very few titles and even then it's not noticable at all.