Audio Questions NP9170

Hey folks I have 2 major questions. The first is what settings would you recommend I enable or change to optimize the audio performance on my new Sager NP9170? I know the thing has a subwoofer in here somewhere, but I hardly hear any good bass at all. Are there some settings I need to tinker with? I saw there is the THX program installed, but I haven't really messed with it. I've just been pretty underwhelmed is all.


2) can someone explain to me, or shoot me a link, about what are the limitations in plugging in additional speakers / audio devices into a laptop? I know it's a nooby question, but I have limited experience in this field. I've never had a laptop with 4 audio plugs and It's a bit confusing. So for example the other day I wanted to boost the audio on my rig so I plugged I found some external speakers and plugged those in, I also had an external monitor (with built in speakers) and plugged that in (via HDMI). I was thinking to myself - "this is going to be sweet, I'll have my built in Onkyo speakers (the ones in my laptop), the speakers on the external monitor, and the external speakers all going at the same time. It was an epic fail. Only one device would play at a time, and when I tried to just get the external monitor speakers to play I couldn't get it to work, only my built in Onkyos would play. It was frustrating.

Anyway so I'm sure there are limitations as to what can and can't be plugged in all at the same time, so could someone shed some light on that for me?

Appreciate it!

 

If I am not wrong the 4 audio ports are mic, headphone spdif and line in port. The spdif ports are for dac if I am not wrong and the line in ports means you transmit audio to your computer. So actually you only have 2 audio ports, one normal one spdif...

 

1) You can adjust the crossover frequency in THX when switched to external speaker mode, you'll have to adjust this with the room correction feature in the Realtek audio control panel, room correction allows you to add 10dB to the subwoofer, THX allows you to add another 15dB. But first thing to do here is turn on Speaker in THX without the THX subwoofer gain feature being turned on, then click on the little triangle on the top right and click on settings then adjust the crossover frequency in THX settings to your liking. And then go to Realtek audio panel, go to Room correction tab and enable room correction, and then adjust the subwoofer. If +10dB isn't enough for you, you can enable the subwoofer gain feature in the THX panel under the Speaker section.

2) I've been using all 4 jacks in 7.1 analog out mode without any problem starting from the bottom to the top, Front Left/Front Rright , Center/Low Frequency Effect, Surround Left/Surround Right, Rear Left/Rear Right. And yes it seems like you can only use 1 device at a time, you either choose HDMI or the Jack. If you right click on the little speaker on the windows task bar and choose play back device it'll bring up a list of all the playback devices you have on your system, but as far as I know, you can only set 1 default device, and that device will be the default device to play the sound if you choose default device in the source(player), unless the source (player) supports playing the sound over multiple devices. So what's limiting is just the program you use to play your songs and movies.

 

Oh so the 4 jacks are all output lines?

 

If you plug a jack in, a message from Realtek audio panel will pop up and ask what mode do you want to use this jack as, you can have each of them running in different mode.

 

Ohhh I nvr knew that

 

Thanks for your help! I'll try it out today.

 

4 small tips:

1) More distance = more echo added when adjusting the speaker distance in the room correction.

2) The feeling of bass will change as you adjust the Surround setting in the THX panel as well, might take a lot of time to find the setting you like. Less % usually results in bass that starts powerfully but ends softly. More % usually results in bass that starts soft but ends powerfully. You might come up with lots of different settings considering you are combining crossover frequency, room correction and THX surround, and if needed, THX subwoofer gain as well.

3) Lower crossover frequency usually results in a more punchy bass, higher crossover frequency usually results in softer bass as it tells the subwoofer to cover more frequency, for deep bass, try higher frequency.

4) The bass added by room correction in the Realtek audio panel is punchier than the bass added by Subwoofer gain in THX panel, even though the subwoofer gain in THX panel adds 15dB.