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    Audio getting quieter on HEL80

    Discussion in 'Other Manufacturers' started by tweetr, Mar 4, 2007.

  1. tweetr

    tweetr Newbie

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    I've been very happy with my HEL80 from PowerNotebooks.com. Love this computer. I do have one nagging problem. It seems that the audio is getting quieter from the speakers and through the headphones. It has always been on the quiet side, but it seems to be getting worse. I now have trouble hearing it if there is any noise at all in the room, and today I could barely hear a movie in an airliner with the iPod headphones plugged in. (No, my hearing is not failing me; my wife has noticed the audio getting quieter too. :)

    Anyone else experiencing this problem? Will updating the audio driver solve it? Any other solution?

    I'm running XP Pro SP2.
     
  2. chrisyano

    chrisyano Hall Monitor NBR Reviewer

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    Hi tweetr. There are a couple of threads about similar issues. Perhaps a quick search through the Compal forum will find you a few things to try.

    What audio source are you noticing is losing volume? Keep in mind that every AV source has a different setting.
     
  3. tweetr

    tweetr Newbie

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    Yeah, I did search through the forum without much success.

    DVD audio is by far the quietest. Games are the loudest, and still give adequate volume, even in moderately noisy environments. iTunes and Media Player fall somewhere in the middle.

    The point of concern is that all speaker and headphone output is getting uniformly quieter than it has been.

    I'm going to try updating the RealTek HD audio driver to see whether that helps. I noticed on my old Dell Inspiron that the audio got louder after one of the driver updates I installed. Maybe it will work for this computer too.
     
  4. pasta1234

    pasta1234 Notebook Guru NBR Reviewer

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    My hgl30 DVD audio volume is about the same volume as a whisper. Its pretty bad and really cant be heard unless i am in a very quiet room. I still havnt found a solution let me know if you find one.

    pete
     
  5. pyro9219

    pyro9219 Notebook Deity NBR Reviewer

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    In XP there is a slider for the optical drive's volume under device manager / device properties. Not sure if vista has this, but might be worth checking into. I'm thinking there are probably still bugs in the vista audio subsystems since it was totally revamped to allow independant application control. Maybe applications that aren't coded to work with this technology simply default to some low setting?