Sound options on Alienware

Is it me or have they removed two of the 3.5mm input/output sockets for sound ?

http://www.dell.com/ca/p/alienware-17-r3/pd.aspx
If you look there is the new trend. Downgrading quality and options.

anyways this is a UBER HIGH END LINE ! why the friggin has it become so mediocre!
it now has this :

(whats funny is a few months ago it said :

They had it saying it had more then it has. I almost bought one earlier this year, that was the determining factor for me NOT buying it. Not the graphics amplifier or the soldered on bullshat or the fake 980M GPU thats soldered on and run liked a donkey but is advertised as a Prime Ferrari male. The Sound. I like using 5.1. Anyways, Alienware sound sucked with the previous revisions, the AW17, was worse then the M17X-R4. I don't know how or why, but the SNR and DB levels in testing were much worse. Now, I can only imagine its gotten even worse.


Know what I see as a positive trait on new laptops this year ? The exact thing I was looking for on Alienware, but on Clevo's or even better Eurocom X9 and X6 both have the full 7.1 or 5.1 analogue with 3.5mm no worries right?

does anyone know what sound processor this uses

How do we compare these and whats the difference in decibels and such, anyone know? Anyone else care about sound on a laptop ?
I know its not like 120bB-SNR or whatever for sure its not going to match an audiophile's wet dreams soundcard, but still, this matter right?!

 

Yes, we went from one SPDIF, one mic, one headphone, and one headset jack on the M17x R3/R4 and M18x R1/R2 to 1 mic, 1 headphone, and 1 headset on the Alienware 17 R1 and Alienware 18 and now only 1 mic and 1 headphone/headset jack. New models are absolute and total downgrades. Alienware has also been bouncing back and forth between IDT codec and Soundblaster Recon3di codec for sound. I personally found the Soundblaster codec to be superior to the IDT.

 

I think Both are crappy base don some numbers.
What do Clevo's use, with that Onkyo or however its called, do you know ?

 

You are confusing speakers with actual audio processing. The speakers on the Alienwares from 2011 up have been made by Klipsch, but the actual audio processing chip (codec) has been flip flopping between IDT(Realtek) and Creative Soundblaster.

I don't know the audio codec on Clevo, but they do use Onkyo speakers.

 

Clevo uses Realtek ALC892 audio codec. Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3 is a software, not hardware.

 

there is still a chip inside from realtek, in the Alienware's its liscenced out, i just forget which codec chip it is.

so he Eurocom laptops have DACs with 95dB SNR (A-weighting), ADCs with 90dB SNR (A-weighting). Thats better then most desktop soundcards. WTF. Most assuredly better then any onboard audio from a motherboard you would normally get, what gives ? Usually laptop codec range in the 70-80's afaik

 

I'm not talking about X-FI MB3. I was referring to Soundblaster Recon3di, which is an actual audio processing chip present on the M14x R2, M17x R4 and M18x R2 as well as the Alienware 17 R2, and Alienware 15 R1

 

It is not. The Sound Blaster ZxR and Essence STX have a much higher dynamic range, 124dB SNR. Also those sound cards sound much cleaner since they are shielded from EMI unlike the onboard.

Almost every mobo worth its salt in the last 5 years or so has had at least the ALC892 if not better (ALC889, ALC898, etc.). Most modern high-end desktop boards use the ALC1150. Also codec implementation is just as important as the design.

I wasn't replying to you. I was replying to this part of the OP's post:

 

So, what would be the verdict here, does the new Eurocom laptops have at least as good sound or better then the previous Alienware's that were good (screw the recent ones, or do those, aside from lacking in options, have great sound ??)

 

Love my little m14x r2. Has 2 headphones jacks and Sound Blaster Recon3Di. Way more reliable then the Alienware 18

 

but it also has a Line in and a spdif, and one of the jacks, probably the line is, is retaskable for 5.1 right ?

 

The Panther's audio is among the worst I have seen (or heard) in a high end laptop. Both input and output are poor quality. The Sky X9 has phenomenal audio. And, it has the biggest speakers I have ever seen in a laptop.

 

wow, thats a huge difference. But the new X9 does have amazing sound then. Is that not just as important as other things for gamers these days ?

 

Important to me. I definitely heard a difference in sound quality when I went from the M17x R3 to the M17x R4 (IDT to Creative)

 

I can't wait to hear the P870DM.

 

Can you elaborate, which was better quality ?

Yeah you want one don't you. Get the "Eurocom X9 Sky" it will treat you better, the other companies are not getting the model for awhile. Just like Eurocom had been taking orders since beginning of September, so..thats what, 2 months ago ?
It will be a X-Mas holiday release. You want a BOSS laptop, get it from Eurocom. If we can get a few of us together who all buy one, we can probably make a deal for ourselves.
From what I am hearing and seeing about it, I think I want one, and I just recently bought the X8 hahah (which BTW, is a beast..)

 

The M17x R4/creative chip for sure. The audio always sounded cleaner.

 

It is... extremely important to some people. I am not an audiophile and my hearing is messed up from too many years of power tools, fire arms, no ear protection and lots of loud heavy metal music. But, I do recognize varying levels horrible, OK and better. I'm satisfied with something that has good volume, not too tinny sounding and no distortion or weird artifacts. The Panther has most of those "features" LOL. But, OMG, that hexacore... totally makes up for it. I usually don't burn many calories thinking about how poor the audio is. Not that big a deal to me in the grand scheme of things, but I do prefer better audio quality.

 

But you have the Panther, thats a workstation, intended for graphic design or possibly a temporary load server, lol. Its a shame it didn't have an option for better sound, it probably would have acquired a sound engineer here and there.

 

I'm OK with it. All of the great things about it overshadow what it lacks in audio quality. Having great audio is a "nice to have" feature for me... having brute performance trumps everything else for me, include audio, aesthetics and build quality. It's a gladiator monster laptop, and I love it.

 

If you think about it though, the users who really care about sound quality don't use the onboard audio and speakers the majority of the time, just like gamers don't use integrated graphics to try to play the latest titles. They use quality headphones or external speakers and a DAC and headphone/speaker amp. So sound hardware is an easy area for OEMs to cut costs and not implement stuff like EMI shielding, which would address the biggest problem with onboard audio, which is the hiss, clicks, pops, etc. you hear under system load or when your hard disk is spinning and so on, especially when using sensitive headphones like IEMs.

 

Someone mentioned workstations above but you can't really expect any serious audio work to be done with onboard anything.
Audio professionals are going to use their pro-grade gears in their studio, most audio works cannot be done on the go anyway.
Computers are very precise tools for calculations, like rendering images and stuff. But audio processing requires high precision on analog level, which is not a speciality of computers.

All my laptops and computers I own and owned have high background noise on their jacks and their onboard DACs and output stage are crap. I don't blame the manufacturers because I know there isn't much can be done with size and budget constraints of laptops. I am no audio professional but my DAC and amp cost much more than my computer already.
Alienware has Klipsch sound but Klipsch is not a good audio brand to begin with in my opinion. I highly doubt anything was actually done for better sound.

MSI on the other hand has Onkyo sound, much better (at least with the built in speakers). The built-in speakers on my cheap, old msi laptop (not onkyo branded) already best all the others I have ever heard (macbooks, acers, asus, gigabytes, alienwares). Even an entry-level model like that has 4 speaker units on it making gaming and watching movies on it a joy. At least it delivers okay dynamic sound with acceptable realism, not tinny, tearing craps on anything else.

 

Well, what if you DO care about Audio but can not afford much else. Guess so far Clevo's are the way to go.