T series speakers are awful - any good equaliser settings suggestions?

Well, the title says it all. The one thing that disappoints me most in my new T420s (more than the lcd) is that the speakers suck - a lot. No bass whatsoever. I was used to a dell latitude I had untill now, and those speakers are about 10 or 20 times better - I had never connected external speakers to it, used them in 70% volume, and the sound range was great, I could hear bass.

Now with the T420s I cannot even watch a movie or listen to music, there's no bass whatsoever. The speakers are basically unusable for anything multimedia related. Only good for an error 'beep' sound I guess. Oh, except the poor quality, the max volume is pretty low too, although that I can live with (with some digital amplification)

Any good suggestions for setting the equaliser? I tried myself, but just pumping up the low frequencies is not very useful and I'm no sound master. If someone has experience (maybe professional) in this sort of thing, please advice. We could make some optimal presets to be used by everyone, that compensate the speakers' shortcomings.

Maybe I'm just weird and picky, or too used to that old latitude speakers.. But I can't stand the lenovo ones, to the point that I'm pondering opening it up and replacing them with something else if possible :/

 

Yeah, I have not heard anything good about the T series speakers. I don't think there is anything you can do to get bass out of them. Kind of sad for a laptop that is generally regarded to be of good quality.

 

Try the following (courtesy of infinus):

To make your speakers louder, right-click the speaker icon in the right bottom corner of your screen > playback devices > speakers > properties > enhancements > check loudness equalization.

This will help make your speakers somewhat louder. You can also play with the bass settings.

 

Try this.

I think it is a driver issue. In Ubuntu, there is a little bit of bass, though by no means is there a lot.

 

I've not heard Dell speakers, but I would never expect tiny speakers on a 14" laptop to be much good anyway, so no surprises there for me at least. Also don't forget that this is not a multimedia machine, it's a business-class laptop and most users probably ain't gonna be listening to music or watching movies using the speakers!

 

I don't think it is a software driver issue (I have also used Ubuntu 11.04 on both systems). I have near-identical Win7 setups in a W500 and a T520, and the sound on the T520 is nowhere near the quality of the W500 (which was nothing special). I am pretty sure it is rubbish hardware - whether it is the sound card or the speakers, ! don't know.
The awful sound is one of the few disasters in this year's 520 series.

 

But under Ubuntu, the speakers are definitely louder (unless I'm hearing things). I think the speakers are fine for laptop speakers. I only use them if I'm too lazy to plug a pair of headphones in.

 

kirayamato26 thanks for the suggestion for the EQ settings. I tried those, can't tell if its better or worse.. But I don't think this is solvable with software after all. It's just rubbish speakers
The latitude is also a business laptop, but speakers are WAY better, at least on that old one I have.
Maybe I will try to open it, get the speakers out to measure their dimensions and try to find something else to put in there.. but its gonna be hard.

Under ubuntu, it seems louder due to the scale that goes above 100%. this is done using software amplification, you can do it in windows too. But the results are not very great, as it just raises the level but the speakers can't support it very well and distort. But they distort in any level anyway so .. I don't know. Crappy speakers. Definitely not on par with other business notebooks, these are the worse I ever had. Just unusable.

 

Try this:

I found a way to increase the sound coming from the speakers. Follow these steps.

Click on:

> Start

> Control Panel

> Lenovo HD Audio Manager

> Advanced

> Sound effects

> Put a checkmark in the box next to Loudness Equalization

> Environment: Living Room. I tried all the settings. This one is the best.

> Equalizer: Vocal. I tried all the settings. This one is the best.

> Karaoke: +0

 

Under Ubuntu even at 100%, it sounds louder than Windows at 100%.

I have used a fair share of laptops, and I can safely say that the W520 (which uses the same speakers as the T520) actually has one of the better sounding speakers. I must've been using laptops with crap speakers, I guess.

 

I've used many laptops over the years, and my T420 has the best speakers. They are better than the ones on my old MacBook Pro, that is for certain.

 

I suppose it is what you come to expect. My 8yr old "business oriented" Dell Precision (15.4"- a Latitude+) had excellent sound - good enough for hours of listening to music and for watching movies on DVD. My 2yr old W500's speakers were only adequate - but OK for listening to online music or watching youtube. My new T500 sound is a noticeable step down from there - it is almost unpleasant to listen to any music, even watching youtube - it just "does the job" - i.e. it provides sound, but little more - a sure sign to me of cheap hardware. It is a bit like some decisions of car makers - to save a few dollars they include a $50 cheaper audio (and low-grade tires!). For a few more dollars we could have had so much more - at a standard in keeping with the rest of the system.

For a few days I used my W500 and my T520 with almost identical system setups and software on exactly the same tasks - and only two differences stood out a mile - the screen and the sound quality.

 

That's why I totally removed the speaker assembly on mine. I would suggest a headphone amplifier connected with a good set of headphones, or running an external speaker system.

 

Hmm I noticed something else yesterday. Using headphones to watch a movie on a plane, the max sound output was pretty low and the quality pretty distorted. I had to use the equalizer to turn down the low frequencies to be able to hear people talking, and used software amplification to have an acceptable volume level. I didn't have this problem on my dell.

Strange - I'm now beggining to think that there's something wrong with the soundcard output, not with the laptop speakers themselves.

Can anyone confirm? How does it sound with headphones?

OK the headphones I used were low quality - but I used to use the same on the dell without issues. I have to dig deeper into this.

 

The sound output is low over the headphone jack, but is still loud enough to make my ears hurt at max. I use headphones with sensitivity ratings of around 115 dBa.

 

This may be related: Problem with audio clipping - ThinkWiki

my ears definitely not hurt at max - I have it on max to watch any movie on headphones.

Ill borrow some better headphones and try again.

 

I've got Bowers & Wilkins P5's and I agree, the the max volume is not loud enough (my friends iPhone had a higher volume output). However, I have no issues with the sound quality.