Qosmio X505 Series Sound Quality

I asked a similar question in the Asus forum about the G73JH, but I wanted to ask it here as well. What do all of you Toshiba owners think of the sound quality of your X505 laptops? I know you aren't going to get concert hall or home theater sound from a lappy, but some laptps sound excellent for laptops, some even equipped with a subwoofer, and others sound medocre or crap. One of the criteria of my decision will be the sound quaity and I was curious what you guys think.

How is the overall sound? How is the bass?

Again compared to the better sounding laptops, not your huge home theater speakers!

I ask this here because the reviews seem to be mixed. The reviewer on the main review page of this site, for instance, said they were disappointed and expected a lot more from the Harmon Kardon speakers. They cited a terrible lack of bass and that anything not "treble-heavy" was sometimes hard to hear. On the other hand, some of the other reviews I read, including the one at laptopmag.com said they were very good. The aforementioned laptopmag reviewer said that the speakers were rich and good enough to fill a living room, referring to the speakers as a "stereo replacement" whatever that means.

 

Well, I have a classical music background, and the speakers sounded very good to me (I'm kind of an audiophile, so I refuse to use earbuds or listen to MP3s when I can get lossless formats instead). I can't honestly critique the bass performance, but you can feel the laptop vibrate on powerful sounds...that might be quite interesting while playing stuff like BFBC2!

Also, I did try enabling the Dolby surround sound, and I thought it gave a very good sonic space.

 

Ha! I so thought you were going to come in here and crap all over my thread, dude!

Seriously, thanks for the input. From someone with a classical background who refuses to use MP3 format to listen to music, that is a ringing endorsment (lol See what I did there?)

About the only issue I had with your review of the sound is that you were testing the unit in a crowded store, which is not the ideal place to demo the sound in particular. Still, if the laptop shook, that would at least seem to indicate that it has a built-in subwoofer, which is great for a laptop. I am going to check the specs to see if Toshiba actually put in a sub.

 

Toshiba Harman Kardon speakers are the best out there, simply and plain.
IMHO these are the only type of laptop speakers that could substitute for standalone ones, that's why I was buying Toshibas for a while despite their niggles.

X505 does not have "subwoofer" though (X205 and X305 do). Mainly because it's not really necessary - they preferred to enlarge the primary drivers making what they call "subwoofer" unnecessary.
What they call "subwoofer" in laptops is by no means a proper subwoofer, it's just a mono low frequency speaker.

 

Yeah, the size of the drivers is definitely apparent:

 

While I have to agree with this for the most part, I have heard laptops with "subwoofers" and without, and invariably the ones without lack an appreciable bottom end to their sound. The subwoofers in laptops are usually on the bottom and are somewhat more a function of design and ergonomics and give their characteristic "rumble" because the driver is pointed at whatever the lappy is sitting on and it resoates off of and through the wood or whatver material your desk is made of.

While this may not be an 18 inch JBL subwoofer in a pro-gear PA system by a long stretch, it gives the laptop more bass. This could be why the reviewers on this site said that the laptop had no bass response.

 

The vibration is actually very bad thing for laptop electronics on the long run. A lot of hardware failures on game laptops come from electronic components being dislodged by low-frequency resonance from their sound systems. If it makes table vibrate - good. If it makes keyboard vibrate - danger.

Saying that X505 "no bass response" is maximalistic overstretch. Being owner of X205 (2-channel drivers with "subwoofer") and X505 (bigger 1-channel drivers) I will say that X505 has less bass response, but the sound is a lot crisper (more mushy sound is inevitable with multi-channel drivers).
X505 clearly has plenty of bass, for example my current W701 while also being crystal clear, totally lacks bass on it's tiny speakers and the difference is very apparent.

 

Also, I have heard the lack of bass on the x505 was a driver problem, easily fixed by updating the driver, not a speaker problem.

Look, if you're into low-frequency booming music (eg. noise), no laptop speaker will ever suffice. And quite frankly, not even headphones will suffice after a few years, because it is proven that low-frequencies damage your hearing even more than high-frequencies. Hell, the report just came out:

Adolescent hearing loss on the rise in U.S. – The Chart - CNN.com Blogs

 

Ah, true. I've totally forgotten about it, since first thing I do with my laptop is the clean reinstall removing vendor who-knows-whats
Yeah, default driver on X505 was doing horrible things to the sound. I guess they eventually fixed it in driver update, but only after quite a time passed.

 

ChiroVette it's funny that you ask that because I was wondering exactly the same thing.
I was hesitating between a Qosmio and Dell studi 1749 (with subwoofer and JBL speakers) or even the Asus G73 JH...

Apperently the Dell sounds great and there is no doubt about it. But as you mentionned, opinions are more diverse for the Qosmio.
I dunno about the driver issue, I hope it's true.

Owners of the Qosmio seems happy right? Can you fill up a small room with sound coming from the Qosmio?

thanks again!!

 

I am more worried about full and rich sound, including a nice balance between reble, mid, and bass than I am about massive room-filling volume, but yeah.

 

I see.
What annoys me the most is when you watch a movie on a laptop and you cant hear anything
As long as the Qosmio allows me to do that i'm fine and the sound needs to be loud enough to listen to music in a room so that it's actually entertaining.

 

I have posted a variation of this type of thing no less than ten times in this forum, but for me it is a little more complicated. I have a laptop from almost 6 years ago called the XPS Gen2 from Dell. It has amazing sound for a laptop, and I am just hoping that the sound in whatever lappy I buy is at least as good as that. Hell, it is 5.5 years later so one would think it is doable as tech increases exponentially. My point is that I don't want to buy a replacement lappy and think, half the time, "Yeah, this is great and all, and I can play all the lates games, but I sure miss the sound on my old cinderblock of an XPS."

 

lol I see
well the Dell studio would do it , asus g51 and g73jh , the qosmio too ofc.
I tried many different Vaios, toshiba, asus (other than the ones mentionned above), acer, Macbookpro, and others and each time the sound sucks hard........ ( (althought I heard the lastest versions of Macbook pro 17 and 15 inches have some improvments)

 

Forget about the Macbook Pros...they still suck eggs. I didn't really like the sound on the G73JH either, but any notebook's audio outshines the Macbooks...