Beats Audio ... Mono Only? What the Hell?

I recently bought a used Dv7t and while watching movies something sounded off ... I checked and sure enough, with Beats Audio enabled, channel separation was screwed up--sounds that were supposed to come out of one channel came out of both. Tried adjusting the available settings and nothing seemed to fix it. Is this a known issue? Is there any way around it other than just disabling Beats Audio?

 

Do you model have sub-woofer? if not just uninstall the idt audio and use windows driver.

There was a thread with a fix to the annoying audio driver behavior as well if the laptop use multi-channel.

 

Thanks for responding, baiii!

My model does have a subwoofer. Does the thread you mention contain a solution for models with subwoofers?

With further experimentation ... EDIT: no, I was wrong--everything plays in mono with or without headphones. This is ridiculous.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...audio-volume-problem-leveling-random-etc.html

seem like the thread is for another problem. I would try use windows build in driver (uninstall idt) and see how it work. IDT never release generic driver.

 

I'll try that, thanks! Just want to be sure I can reinstall the IDT driver if need be. Wish I could give you more reps but the site won't let me.

Do you or anyone know how the whole 4.1 speaker thing works, exactly? Do the drivers take a 5.1 signal and decode it into 4.1 channels, with separate front and rear channels, etc?

Thanks!

EDIT: Improved things somewhat by lowering the "center" setting -- now I get better separation between left and right channels. I think "center" has something to do with the phantom center channel but I'm not sure.

As to the rest of these settings ... "focus," "space," etc ... any ideas on what they're supposed to mean?

 

The 4.1 is works like a 2.1, but with separated high and mid level for the 4 speakers and of course the bass for the subwoofer.

 

Thanks for weighing in, Kirrr!

So that means there is no separation between front and rear channels? It is all just stereo and bass?

 

Yes its just stereo + the sub.

 

So what software determines the crossover point to filter the low end to the sub? Is that the beats audio or IDT software that does that? And if you uninstall the beats audio/IDT drivers and use the default windows drivers, do you lose the crossover?

 

The Beats software is just an equalizer thing. The IDT is the main software that does the job.