Improving Sound Quality

Hi All,

I own a Dell Inspiron E1505 with a pretty standard on board soundcard. I recently picked up a pretty amazing pair of stereo bookshelf speakers + Amplifier which is plugged into my laptop to listen to my downloaded music (high bitrate), but I feel that the on-board soundcard does not do justice to the audio setup.

Any tips or information regarding how I can maximise the sound quality from my laptop? Software upgrades etc? I'm not all that keen on spending money on an external soundcard unless it's really worth it.

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

external sound card is really the only thing that will help.. software tweaks will only help so much and wont get past the fact that most consumer notebooks have crappy little amplifiers built in.

 

Thanks Wally!.. Any recommendations? Dont want to spend too much...

 

try these...

Creative Sound Blaster tactic Alphas...it comes with an external USB X-FI sound card that you can plug the headphones into or plug speakers into etc. The X-fi is much better than standard audio in your dell. The best part is that i bought mine for $40 on sale. They sound awesome when you use the THX TruStudio Pro...currently on sale at newegg for $52 shipped

Sound Blaster Tactic3D Alpha

 

@OP

I would avoid Creative if you want a good sound quality to cost ratio. Creative ranks way at the bottom. For something that will beat your onboard, try for a Fiio E7 or a uDAC 2. They both cost around $100 and are amazing. I use the Fiio E7 with my Triple Fi 10's and I can hear the difference between my Envy 17 onboard and the Fiio E7.

If you want more information, checkout the head-fi forums. Though the information there may blow your mind, it really is interesting once you get through all the fluff.

 

You can just try updating your comp with the latest audio driver and use the built-in sound manager to play with different set-up (equalizer etc ..); coupling with your nice external speakers this will do fine.

cheers ...

 

The E1505 was my first notebook. I found the sound to be quite decent. I never had external speakers with it though.

My Latitude E4300 has AWFUL audio in general, but I have speakers to make it somewhat better.