Dell Xps 15 9550 Poor Digital Sound Quality

This has been an issue I've had since I purchased the laptop, and I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed.

I have the latest Realtek audio drivers. When I play an mp3 from the headphone jack to my speaker system, the sound is very blah. Low base and just sounds tinny, even when coming out of my $2k sound system.

However, when I play the same audio file from my phone or another computer, the sound is much fuller and there is much more bass. Also, I used my previous xps 15 (L502x) and the sound is much fuller. The oddball is my 9550. Again, this has nothing to do with the 9550 speakers because I'm directly connecting to my receiver with my headphone jack. Also, I made sure there are no equalizers or anything on any of the systems, or my phone. Basically, every other device I have plays much better sound quality as compared to my 9550. I tried turning on some equalizers in the 9550, but this still does not match the output of any other device. Does anyone else have this issue or have any suggestions. It's driving me nuts because I like to stream music from my laptop to my speakers, but the sound is noticeably sub par.

 

Silly question, but what is the sound output level coming out of your headphone jack? 40%, 75%, 100%, etc

Also, how does it sound with headphones coming out of your laptop?



Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

 

Transmit the sound through something that isn't analog? The headphone jack doesn't transmit a digital signal, it transmits an analog signal and that will only be as good as the DAC chip in the XPS is. I personally haven't really seen problems with outputting to my Sennheiser HD25-1 ii though. Connecting to a USB DAC and feeding that to your sound system will bypass the issue entirely, it won't fix your issue with the jack.

EDIT: made a test with mine passing the sound through my FiiO E17 through both USB and the aux in jack. The latter just uses the FiiO as an amp rather than use both the DAC and amp portions of it. There's a small difference between the two, but every DAC chip is slightly different. It doesn't sound too bad coming directly from the XPS actually. I prefer the FiiO, but I'm betting on it having a better DAC chip in it since it's what I bought it for anyways.

 

Thank you both for your responses. For the output volume, Ive tried at different volumes, between 50% to 100%.

Are either of you using the Waves Maxxaudio software when outputting sound? Because I have mine disabled, and it won't start now, so I wonder if that could be an issue.

Tijo, thanks for doing a test on your own. For me, it is incredibly noticeable. This is one thing I did for a test, and I'd be interested in your opinion:

1) Use a different device to play this song on your headphones (i.e.) don't use your xps 15, just to hear the bass portions (specifically around the 32 second mark):



2) Play this song directly from the xps 15 to your headphones, and compare the bass.

On my end when I do this, portions of the bass are completely missing and it almost sounds like I different song. I'm not an audiophile, but I can notice a huge difference. Let me know what you think.

 

I will bet that somewhere, you have some setting that does some kind of audio processing. Something like virtual surround, some kind of sound or vocal "enhancement", etc.

The sound behavior you described is a dead on match for what happens when you have that kind of sound processing going on.


Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

 

I thought the same thing, however I went into my sound properties and there are no enhancements selected. Did you try the test I posted above to see if there was a difference for you?

 

I just tried it, sounds pretty much the same to me. Maxx audio enhancements disabled on my end. Had to put the video at 720p to make sure sound quality was ok though. The driver I am using at the moment is the one from Dell's website, it was installed early this month. I don't think I've updated it afterwards.

 

Ok, yup so an an update, I uninstalled the Realtek drivers. This then allowed me to open Dell Audio (it wouldn't open before I uninstalled the drivers). And from there I was able to disable Max Audio, which I originally thought was disabled because I disabled the service, but it looks like it was still being applied. Anyway, after all this, now my audio is perfect. So no issues hopefully this helps someone.

 

Ok, this is definitely a necro thread, but I'll ask anyway.

I've been wondering what's the DAC of Dell. I managed to properly setup the audio, and have the ability to turn off the MaxxAudio. I really have to say, using a headphone (ATH MSR7 in my case), it sounds really really bad. I tried following the tweak in equalizer shared in reddit to no avail. In comparison, using an Audioquest DragonFly 1.5 plugged into its USB port sound way better. Yes, I already have a USB DAC but still wondering how the hell Dell can sound this bad. I already reformatted mine, reinstalled the driver, but still the same..... Anything that I missed?

 

USB DAC = problem solved. Theres to much interference from the mobo and components, even if the onboard sound chip were something decent, this problem would exist.

My Fiio X5ii doubles as a USB Dac and it sounds 100 times better than the onboard sound when i connect headphones to the laptop.

 

The audio output on the Dell is fine, really. If you have bad sound then you have a wrong setup (see thread starter). If you have too low volume on your phones then you use the wrong audio device in your player. Change to Wasapi and the 9550 phones output has more than 8 dB higher output level - and really rocks. The standard WDM and Direct Sound devices seem to have a default lower level to not clip in case one ramps up the EQ in Waves.

 

The drivers are the key problem.

The windows audio drivers are fine but RealTek keeps uninstalling them. I tried recent RealTek audio drivers directly from RealTek with no issues. Also you do not want MAXX or any type of EQ running. None of this is as easy to do as you expect but there are lots of posts here on NBR to help you out...

Finally, the speakers are very small and poorly placed so audio will never be great. The headphone out is decent. But until you get the proper drivers, both speakers and headphones sound absolutely terrible.

 

I get distortion from the head phone jack and sometimes extreme crackling from the tiny external speakers. It might be drivers or bios related, but it sounds better with a USB Dac regardless, so it doesnt bother me.

I'm running bios 1.02.00, everything is perfect except the sound.

But i mostly listen Hi Res audio, so you hear the difference more, especially with with good headphones. Maybe the sound is fine, Im just fussy when it comes to audio quality.

 

I usually run through a few DACs and audio quality is better. With older Dell audio drivers, sound via external DAC & headphone amp was still terrible.

Regardless, for all external DACs there are still a few bugs (eg changing screen brightness via f11 and f12 keys crackles audio, playing youtube at 1.5x speed in M$ Edge causes audio crackling).

Interestingly, one external DAC runs proprietary ASIO drivers (RME) and the crackling comes through in those two scenarios. However, with the RME DAC running at 44.1 or 48 khz, youtube videos do not crackle at 1.5x speed. In theory, the RME software should be completely overriding windows drivers. One person here identified the brightness issue as a BIOS latency issue...

 

MAXX has a tendency to reenable itself. Even by removing the drivers, windows will auto update and worse, MAXX will be enabled without a UI to be disabled. Took me a while but after managing to remove the stupid driver, the DAC sounds fine for a laptop. Comparing the internal chip to my FiiO Q1 on my HD598, there definetly is a different, especially in the highs. However, on cheaper headphones the difference isn't noticeable (creative aurvana's). Might wanna check to see if MAXX secretly enabled itself, it's basically overloads speaker systems with ridiculously overpowered highs causing crackling. Almost deaf myself in the library while wearing my RHA MA750 not knowing MAXX was being stupid again. A sibilant IEM + MAXX = RIP eardrums.

EDIT: Just wanna add, MAXX enabled will affect BT speakers, AUX, internal speakers. It luckily doesn't affect external DACs. Whew!

 

@pressing: I got RME here as well. As explained before ASIO is no real problem, you can easily up the buffer size in the RME control panel. If you use non-ASIO software then the buffer size is capped AFAIK, because the WDM subsystem does not allow bigger buffers then either 256 or 512 samples.

 

Just to add my input to this thread, I recently purchased a Dell XPS 15 and use it for audio work (I'm a music producer & teacher) and noticed this lack of bass. When A/Bing the signal on a mixing desk the sound quality was terrible, with no enhancements and a clean install of Windows without any Dell bloatware software.

The fix for this was to delete the Realtek High Definition Audio device from device manager by right clicking and uninstalling. After a reboot Windows installs its own High Defition Audio drivers and the sound quality is 1000 times better - full bass, much louder and and overall better sound quality. There's something fishy with the Realtek drivers!

 

If you're doing music work with a laptop, you're probably going to be much better off with an external USB DAC. There are several from Fiio that can be bought on Amazon, that are all excellent performers for their price. There are a variety of different sizes and models. All are excellent, and all will give you much better sound than what you'd get from onboard sound.

I personally use something like a Fiio E10K DAC ( Amazon Link $75) for my gaming desktop, and find it excellent because it outputs high-quality sound to headphones and external speakers simultaneously.

 

Simon,

The early 9550 audio drivers were absolutely terrible and there are plenty of threads documenting that.

First, that Maxx Waves program is awful - kill it.

You can delete the Realtek drivers as the recent Microsoft drivers work fine. However, the Realtek ones tend to reinstall themselves so there are some tricks posted here on the forums if you want to permanently delete the Realtek drivers.

That said, the recent Realtek drivers work fine for me so you might deleting the current drivers and installing the latest Realtek drivers.

Finally, the 9550's speakers are very small, mediocre quality, and downwards facing, so sound quality is never going to be very good. But with decent drivers, the sound is OK (e.g. not irritating) for a tiny laptop. Apple has much better built in audio.

I use a RME BabyFace Pro USB DAC with its own ASIO drivers for audio work and it works great.